#ylteacher

New year and new preschoolers! (and an old teacher:-)

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There has not been a school year in which I would not actually go to school, not since 2007, anyway but, somehow, every year is different, in its own way. This year I went back to teaching a lot of students individually, online, and then back to groups of preschoolers offline.

The classroom and the resources

Long story short: Nothing happens overnight, nothing happens in a blink.

Naturally, I hope for all of us teachers out there, that we enter the classroom in a kindergarten, in a language school, in the student’s home or in a language studio and everything is just as we imagined and the classroom is just perfect, teacher and student-friendly and we have all of the resources and organised beautifully.

In case it is not (and, most likely, it will not be so, in about 99% of cases), it will take some time to get it into shape.

During our sessions on the course I keep telling teachers that it is the most precious thing, to have this ideal pre-school classroom at the back of your head because it will help shape the real environment in which we find ourselves with our students.

This year, it has taken me about two months, to turn the classroom into a place that we all enjoy being in and which works out logistically, with our routine and with our numbers.

It is not a very big place and we have to share it with some other classes, groups and adults, but we have enough room for the small chairs and the hello circle, one big table for our writing and craft and a bit TV and room in front of it for dancing and singing. We have two small cupboards for our resources and lots and lots of walls for our posters and materials.

I have already figured out the layout of the resources and I have organised the flashcards, too. I am not using a basket this year but I have a box for all of the resources for each group where I keep all of the resources for the unit. It makes preparing for each group a bit easier without putting them all away every single day. And, at the same time, I can put them all away not to get in the way when someone else is using the classroom.

The teacher

There is only one thing here (a word from an old hand): dear teacher, be good to yourself. We want the best for our students, we work hard, we teach, we prepare, we reflect and do a better job next time. No two groups are alike and but, with a little bit of time and patience, we can get good results. Kids Can! Teachers Can!

The kids

My students are, of course, amazing. Some of them have been with the school for some time, studying with some other teachers in the past, some of them are new to the school and to learning English. The approach is just being open-minded and working, step by step, towards the routine that I would like to have.

The older group have got used to it pretty quickly and it was relatively easy to just work effectively, with an established routine.

The younger group is still work in progress because we get new students joining in. As a result, wee have been at the stage of ‘building the routine’ since September, simply because every time I think ‘oh, I think that’s that’, there is a new student and, in a way, we go back to square one.Everyone needs a fair chance and the time necessary to figure things out, to get to know the other children and to learn the ropes. It does help a lot that the ‘old’ students (aka those who have been in the group since the start of the year) are our beautiful role-models and we are catching up again.

The activities (and the pairwork)

Our hello circle is quite a long one and in every lesson we talk about all of the following:

  • Homework check
  • My name is…and I want…(kids introduce themselves and ask for something, I draw it on our mini-whiteboard)
  • What’s the weather like today? (asking and answering questions and then putting the relevant pictures up on the board)
  • Hello song
  • Clothes: Who’s wearing jeans?
  • Christmas Words Advent Calendar (only in December)
  • Literacy practice (only the older group)
  • A revision game (based on what we have covered so far, different, depending on the group)

The older group have started doing pairwork and it has worked amazingly well.

  • They have been in one group for two years already and they know each other very well
  • They have had a chance to lead certain activities
  • I have used the seating from the hello circle (small chairs in a circle, we only moved them a bit for the kids to face each other)
  • We have used an activity they already know well (a set of flashcards and a question – answer: Are you scared of…? – I’m scared / I’m not scared /I’m brave / I like..). We have done this activity a few times with the teacher leading and with a student leading for the whole group.
  • If you are interested in setting up pairwork with a beginner group, have a look at the earlier post here.

The other activities that have been a hit this year:

  • Secret words here
  • Soft toys: for body parts, for prepositions, counting and colours
  • lots of adjectives for emotions (now we have 16 to choose from) for our hello circle
  • Funky Envelope
  • Little hearts for ‘I like’ and ‘I don’t like’ and a very big heart for ‘I love’ which the kids requested))

Happy teaching!

A box in the attic. Saying goodbye

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Me, Dex and a bag of junk going home

A box in the attic is what is left of the past two years in my bilingual primary school. I mean, to be specific, there is one big box and a few smaller boxes, the attic is not quite the attic but this special storage space, not the actual attic and, of course, it was not a school where I worked and NOT my actual property of a bilingual school. But, apart from that, that’s what it is. I have packed up the experience of two years in a very special environment and I put it away.

This post will be kind of on the personal side and I really have no idea if there is anything mildly useful to anyone else out there but, the thing is, I really want to write it. Spoiler: it is a part of the whole process of saying goodbye and closing down.

Things to do in the classroom

Aka cleaning which one is the number one thing and the easiest thing to do. Me and my (self-diagnosed) OCD – we just loooove cleaning, clearing out and taking out the rubbish and then breathing peacefully in a space that is a bit neater.

Getting rid of the rubbish that, inevitably, piled up throughout the year, that was very gratifying, sorting out things and finding out bits and pieces that I thought I had lost or I forgot I had bought – this was fun. Moving around the furniture or tearing things off the walls – that was just great. I hated throwing out things that I just could not keep, like mountains of kids’ paintings (those that I could not keep or those that were left after I gave out things to people). Looking at my classroom, suddenly just a room with bare walls and a window, not a place where we have achieved so much, where we have suffered so much and where we have laughed so much, that was beyond sad, no other words.

However, walking to the metro, for the last time, with my dragon dinosaur sticking out of the bag, I was almost giggling because I realised that the school location is so much off the beaten track for me that avoiding it to avoid all the memories and sadness will be super easy.

Things to do with the kids

Somewhere along the way, I realised that I made a decision to have the best two weeks at school for my students, the best possible. In class, during the breaks, during the concert, the final exams and tests.

It took a few hours to assemble the presents, a little bag filled with the silly junk that second-graders might appreciate: a capybara keyring, a few fluorescent party sticks, stickers and a UV marker and, the most precious of all the streamers popper extra piece that everyone got to play with at home (because I wanted to make sure that no one will ok with using the one during our concert). And, the most difficult of all tasks – I sat down to write a personal letter to every single one of my students. To tell them that they are fanstastic, hard-working and absolutely amazing. To thank them and to say good-bye.

I left the presents on the window in their classrooms and begged to open only after the show. Amazingly, they did hear me and they did listen. The final victory!

Our final show was amazing and we have great videos and photos to look back on, to reminisce. The kids loved it, the parents loved it and, miraculously, everything went to plan.

We wrote our final exams, we did the speaking part and we even managed to write one more letter to our pen-pals in Turkey. It was not an easy week but it was beautiful.

Things to do with the parents

I saw most of the parents during these last three days and we managed to say good-bye. I wrote to everyone to thank them for everything and, in exchange, I got lots and lots of messages that made me believe and confirm that it was not all in vain and that we did a good job, over those two years.

Things to do with self

When I came home after the last proper school day, I was just exhausted. The day was so emotionally charged that I was ready to reboot and to go to sleep almost immediately after walking into the flat. And that is what I did. The next few days were basically a blur and I just tried to focus on the daily routines. One of my colleagues asked about the plans for the future and I remember answering ‘I am unable to make any decisions at the moment. In fact, I mustn’t make any serious decisions at the moment. I have enough of brain cells power to decide what’s for breakfast, nothing more’ and it is amazing how accurate that was.

Then, after everything was packed and the project was closed, it was necessary to take things easy, slow down, do nothing for a while or do your favourite things. And, only then, when the dust settles, start thinking of the next step.

It took about two weeks for me to be ready to deal with all of the things that I brought from school, the resources that were mine, books, craft junk and the precious markers, and the most precious of my students’ works that I would never like to throw out. All of that had to be sorted out, looked through, packed nicely and, yes, eventually, put away, in boxes.

‘What’s next?’

I have heard this question about a million times over the last few weeks. I am talking, I am considering and, most importantly, I am thinking. I am in my chrysalis state. We’ll see what will come out of it.

Happy teaching!

Teaching children online. Where to start?

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What a teacher’s table looks like after an online lesson in primary…(realia, toys and adjectives)

Instead of a preface

I am writing this post as a response to many of the enquiries that I get from the trainees of the teacher training courses that I have been running for a decade now. Of course, this question rose to popularity with the year 2020, the pandemic and the fact that we have all embraced the online world since.

I have not always been a huge fan of the online education but, like many of my colleagues, I was forced to at least try exisiting in the online classroom over the period of the lockdown in the spring – summer 2020. And, because of how the world has turned to be, since the pandemic I have been spending about one third of my teaching life one: teaching all my young learners online during the pandemic, teaching online and hybrid in the crazy 2020 – 2021 academic year, teaching adults and my teenagers online permanently and teaching pre-schoolers, the regular EFL/ ESL and teaching English through Art, too.

As a result, today, when my teacher trainees ask me about teaching children online, I say: Yes, sure, it is just one of the classrooms that I work in.

This particular post is intended to be a set of ideas and suggestions for teachers who have never worked online and who want to start. These are not all the answers, only how I would get started, with a brand new group of kids. Maybe someone will find it useful)

Before the first lesson

The most important part of the course, before it even starts, would be talking to the parents. What I would like to find out would be:

  • as much as possible about the children as humans: how old they are and what their interests are, how they spend their time and what they like to do
  • as much as possible about the children as learners: whether or not they have learnt English before or interacting with English in any capacity and whether they have had a chance to learn anything online
  • as much as possible about the parents’ expectations regarding learning the language

Depending on the answers to the above questions, the conversation with the parents would have take into consideration to make the lesson successful and effective:

  • the working space for the child. It might be obvious for the parents that the child needs a special place to sit down, i.e. a table and a chair (not the bed or the carpet in the playroom), but a chair that can be moved aside if the movement stage of the lesson comes up. This should be a place that is quiet, away from the TV or the busy living room or the kitchen where the rest of the family hangs out.
  • the set of resources that might be necessary. It can be a list of standard resources that you will be using in every lesson, a notebook, a set of markers or crayons and handouts, all depending on the age of the child, as well as some specific resources needed for the particular lessons.
  • the presence of an adult who will be helping the little student during the lesson and what kind of a support is going to be necessary. With younger children (pre-schoolers), it might be necessary for an adult to be around all the time, although it might be necessary to highlight that the children need to be developing their independence
  • the length of the lesson that will depend on the child’s age and the previous online learning experience. Even if the optimal length is estimated at 45 minutes, it would be recommended to start with a shorter lesson. If the kids have not studied online before, they will not have enough attention span to participate and to focus to make this lesson effective. It is better to start with 20 or 25 minutes and extend it to one academic hour over a few weeks. And, of course, explain it to the parents.
  • the potential resources, the most important being the potential for printing resources at home. If the parents can do that – you will be able to use a little bit more, if not – in that case the lesson will be based only on the electronic resources.

The platform

There are a lot of platforms available and, in the end, everyone chooses something that works for them. It has to be the tool that you know very well and the tool that works in the classroom. I personally like to have a platfrom that lets me share the screen and see the students faces at the same time, that is not very tricky with the sound sharing but I don’t really care about the whiteboard option or the drawing on the screen option for the kids. Just a choice and I know that some teachers use these a lot. For the older primary students studying in groups, I like to have the breakout room option for some of the activities (although, again, that is for the groups only and that is not something to do in the very beginning of the course but something to aspire to).

The resources

Please remember that I am myself a dinosaur and I have always been a lazy teacher or a minimalist teacher (save for the special occasions when I splash out). The same applies to the resources in the online lesson. During the early stages of the pandemic, there has been this panic to find and to incorporate as many platforms, games, resources in the lesson as possible. Basically, every week was THIS NEW THING that you had to learn about and to use with your students. That was overwhelming, to say the least, because the most important thing in the lesson is the teacher and the methodology and the tools, no matter how fancy, cannot replace a good structure and a plan.

For that reason, what you see below, is a very basic list, the things that I am using at the moment but that is not everything out there. That said, I am always on the lookout for the new solutions and new things to inspire me, so feel free to use these ideas and keep your eyes open for more!

  • the coursebook, if applicable, the paper copy for the kids
  • the self-made handouts that I send to students if the parents can print them
  • the mini-flashcards that we prepare with the students, if the parents can print them. Usually, there are four per A4 paper, the parents cut them before the lesson, the kids can colour them, I have my own set and we use them for riddles, for testing each other (T: show the card, S: say the word, then swap the roles), substitution drill with the new structures, What’s my secret word? (guessing which card from the set the T / the S is holding) etc.
  • online games – for the lesson and for the homework or revision.
  • bamboozle games, although for the younger or new students, I start with one team games (‘we are collecting the points for us’) or with severly adapted power-ups list
  • some of the Games to learn English. This is a good example of why it is good to continue checking and searching. I have known this resource for ages but I haven’t used it for a year or so but I visited it last week and so much has changed. There are some new games, focused on a specific structure and the past tense or the prepositions. It definitely feels like a new best friend.
  • traditional (and not so boring) powerpoints which is my homemade online board replacement. I used to use the professional online board but, admittedly, it became simply overwhelming. I use the powerpoints in the same way, T: moves/uncovers the item, S: say things and I like it more because I can organise them by the team, copy them for each student etc.
  • the realia that you have and that the kids have at home. Luckily, with the online world, we are truly blessed, practically everything that we teach in primary and pre-primary kids have at home, toys, clothes, colours, sport equipment and even the pets or the family member. They should be used in the lesson to make the langauge real. It might be a good idea to inform the parents before the lesson what will be used in class, just to make them aware that the kids might be walking around and bringing things and that it is for a reason.
  • the craft resources such as plasticine, coloured paper, glue, scissors, crayons or markers or whatever else you want to use. Craft online is a bit more challenging but not impossible. It might be a good idea to leave it for later in the course when you and the students know each other a bit more and when they understand how the lesson works. Again, the parents need to be notified ahead of time, to prepare the materials or even to check and to confirm that they are available. Of course, if a kid is at home, the coloured paper or the glue are lying around at home but it is always better to confirm ahead of the lesson time.

The lesson

Again, this is the lesson format that works for me and it does not really differ much from what we do in the offline classroom with my students.

Regardless of how long the whole lesson is, I divided into three sections: Revision, New Material / presentation, Practice. They are more or less even, without being to strict with the time slots.

  • A song to get us started, a proper Hello song or just a song that we like.
  • Revision: saying hello, talking how we feel, what we are wearing etc, depending on the age/ level of the child, actually revising the vocabulary, playing some familar and favourite games.
  • New material presentation: in the middle of the lesson, when the kids are already warmed-up but still with enough energy and focus for something new, this is when I introduce the new vocabulary or the new material and when we do some controlled practice, too.
  • Practice: more productive games, more freedom for the kids.
  • Goodbye: a new song, a video, a story, to finish on a high note.

Coda

If you are just starting in the online world, good luck to you! Remember that in many ways, this is a just a new lesson with student or a new group, doing a new thing and in our early years world, it is very rarely that things work from the word go. It is the routine, the repetition and the familiarity that make things look like we want them. Quite frequently, a new activity done for the first time is just like a preview. If something does it work, reflect on why it didn’t and then try to change some things around and do it again.

Make sure you keep in touch with your students’ parents. Feedback is always necessary but it is crucial during the early stages of the new class because apart from building the routine with the student, you are also building the trust with the parents. And it is a process.

Happy teaching!

Spring in year 2 classroom management. Setting up the routine. A series.

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First a few words of introduction…

It has been quite a while since I wrote in the series (the first episode is here, the most recent here). I was travelling in the beginning of March and I couldn’t write and later I just didn’t feel like putting together a piece, just because the schedule said so. I didn’t, I decided to be nice to myself. However, it also made me think that maybe the time has come to change things here a tiny little bit. Even in January and December, half of the post went along the lines of ‘no changes’ and I realised that we (the class) have changed so much that new solutions have to be put into use.

I will still keep notes here, because some of the things we use might be useful for other teachers and I still need this series as a way of reflecting on my teaching and their learning and progress but I will not be on monthly basis.

The routine et al.

All the new tricks I have added and how they work for us:

  • the nicknames we still use although the question I ask now is ‘Am I writing your name or your nickname?’, just to give the students some freedom and flexibility. Those that feel creative on the day can express themselves (and some do a lot of that, our current record is 8 lines of a nickname) and some just use their names, sometimes written in a different colour or with a heart. The other kids are always curious to see who is choosing what each day and sometimes they add detail, help with translation or correct me when I, accidentally, use the wrong nickname or when I use the name instead of the nickname. Which, really, just shows that they are listening and paying attention. And that’s all I want. Plus, it is definitely something that we do together, a feature of our community. When someone comes late to class or when we exchange groups and Class A comes after Class B, they try to guess who chose what as their name.
  • the improvisation song is still with us (and it has been now a year and three months). Sometimes we sing once, sometimes more than once and I love the kids continue to use it to express themselves in English, to talk about emotions, to experiment with different ways of singing certain words and how we started to use it as call – response song whenever there is a question or whenever they just feel like reacting in their own ways (instead of just repeating the verse). More creativity? Yes, please!
  • give your teacher a grade: admittedly, it is not something I do every week but I try to included it once in a while, more or less twice a month. I am trying to use different techniques like leaving notes and grades on the board or preparing cards with specific questions (Was it difficult? Was it interesting? etc).
  • the grades for the week: I still write notes to summarise the performance of the students over the week only now we have a few more categories, although these vary depending on the week. This week, for example, we had: English, Maths, Behaviour, Notebook (we are working on handwriting and neat notes) and Accuracy (a specific task we did in Maths). The kids usually get to see them on Monday and they are still really curious about them. And they care. Sometimes they want to tell everyone what they got, sometimes they check with me or ask additional questions, they always read.
  • new rules were added, too, based on what we have been going through, emotions and lessons, basically the things that seemed like something that we might use in the future. These include ‘Get it together’ (a nice call to action from a song), ‘My feelings are the message from my brain’ (also from a song) and ‘Wait’ (just because we need it, still and desperately, too!).

Story, Socialising and Creativity

All our English classes have been about stories as the whole unit in our book has been devoted to adventures, superheroes, stories, adjectives to describe heroes and we used that opportunity!

We have already finished but we managed to: introduce and properly practise Past Simple, lots of regular and irregular verbs and questions, talk about our yesterdays, we watched and talked about some clips from ‘How to Tame Your Dragon?, we talked about types of stories and why we have narrative and dialogue, we wrote and talked about our favourite stories, we wrote a short story and we read ‘Splat the Cat. The Name of the Game’ because it seems to be a perfect story for us and all the problems we still deal with while playing.

Our story lesson was particularly memorable because we created a few beautiful pieces, we had a reading session in two language, we praised everyone and I want to type up all the stories and turn them into another issue of our school magazine. I will only have to ask the kids to describe what kind of an illustration they would like to have with their story. We will only have to write some description for the kind A.I. to create them. Next week.

We haven’t done any other creative tasks, not properly, but I noticed that kids expressed a lot of interest in the creations that always dry on the window sill after my Art Explorers and I think it might be a sign that I need to think of something like that.

The teacher

I have been a tired teacher in February. I was busy with all the other project (term break camp, conference and the real life errands) but I have had quite a few good moments like realizing that we have really made progress regarding reading and writing and that we have actually learnt how to understand and use fractions and decimals.

The classroom management and bringing up the kids never stops (never never never) but we have made a lot of progress and I know we are going to be fine. It is great to know that while some of my kids keep repeating ‘I don’t like school’ or ‘I want to go home’, they also add, to each other, mostly, ‘I like English, though’ and ‘I really like Maths in English’ so there is some comfort in it, too.

Things to do in March / April

  • another story
  • going back to the more advanced phonics
  • preparation for the YLE Cambridge
  • more pairwork and speaking
  • our garden

Happy teaching!

Movement March! Nature (aka Turner and waves!!!)

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The language

This week was simply a repeat of the previous week’s class, with the only variation being some new sentences in our game (‘What are you doing?’) and a new set of pictures for the presentation and this time we used the famous paintings and the actions in them. This stage of the lesson was relatively short but that is because the artist would make a proper entrance.

The same artist. Twice.

The artist

The guest and the Artist of the Day was J.M.W. Turner who visited in the past. I decided to bring him back because he felt perfect as a representation of movement through a very simple medium of the sea and the clouds.

Normally, the stage in which I show the kids my model happens a bit later in the lesson, just before we start creating. In this particular lesson, however, I changed the order and before revealing who the artist was I presented my two paintings: the seascape painted practically with one colour and almost with no lines and the other one with plenty of colours and plenty of lines. This was to demonstrate the difference and to encourage my students to use these two basic tools later on in the lesson. I also asked the kids which one they liked more. (Unsurprisingly, the second one, for the majority of students but there were some who liked the peace and quiet of the first one, too!)

Afterwards, we looked at some of the paintings created by Turner and how he tried to depict the movement in them. It happened almost naturally that they started to express their opinion (‘It is beautiful’, ‘It is scary’, etc).

You can find the presentation we used here.

Here you can find a very interesting article about the movement in art.

Here is a whale jumping out of the water…

The art

Last week we worked with watercolours and the task was ridiculously simple: draw the sun, the sky and the water (just like Turner did!) and try to show the movement using the colours and the lines.

This was a day of surprises in the classroom and here is the list of the things that surprised me most:

  • how easy it is to create a beautiful seascape, even for the artists who are only five or six or eight
  • how touching are all the images the children created
  • how involved all of my students got into the task despite the fact that we are a mix bunch and there are some who love art and creating and those who don’t really do it very frequently
  • how they approached the task and how they adapted it to their own needs and perspectives, by adding human figures or animals or boats to accentuate the movement, by changing the setting and visualising movement in nature in the mountains or in the fields and how proud they were of their works
  • how easy it was for them to experiment with the colours, the lines and the settings
  • how un-coincidental all the decisions were. And I know it because I could hear what they were talking about while they were working.
  • how they enjoyed the task
  • how the youngest artist painted a very calm and uneventful sea but then decided to experiment with the materials and his sky was, in fact, created with the wheels of the toy car, resulting in thin black clouds
  • and how the other young artist, almost as young, but attending our classes since September, has shown a lot more maturity and understanding of the task (though I love both pictures!)
  • how two of them decided to change the settings and go for the mountains instead
  • how one of my older students found a new passion for colour and for experimenting with mixing different shades and colours
  • how one of my most talented just went for a huge, uncontrollable cloud, a hurricane almost
  • how this most precious picture was created by one of my students, two days after the lesson, just because we have found the van Gogh background in the stack of the recycled paper. How the real artist saw the movement in the clouds and how the transformed the sky into the sea because the idea lingered…
The mountains, just before the movement
The mountains
The cat under the sky
The sea and the sky
Art at 6
Colours, colours, colours!
A magnificent storm!

Happy teaching!

Hearts and Jean-Michel Basquiat

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The language

February is our Fun Cartoon February but language-wise I decided to focus on Present Continuous to work on verbs and to get us ready for storytelling later on in the year. This is also a great TPR-friendly structure that comes in very handy and gives us a chance to move a little bit when we meet at around 4 pm, already a bit tired after a whole long day at school. We have a set of basic activities for that, tried and tested, that include making sentences based on stencils, Pete the Cat and his ‘Rocking in my school shoes’ (video and song) and a miming-guessing game (the calss asking:’Sasha, what are you doing?’, Sasha demonstrating and the kids guessing).

The artist

The day has come! Jean-Michel Basquiat is here! It has taken some time for him to arrive (mea culpa!) but it is finally happening. I was racking my brain in order to find a match for February and my own alliteration challenge because I really (really) wanted to deal with Basquiat (and with Roy Lichtenstein and Keith Harring) as soon as possible.

I introduced him to my students in the usual way (name, photo, country, favourite thing) and we looked at a few of his creations, including one of the self-portraits, cats and his ‘Robot man’. Funnily enough, my kids found some of his pictures a bit scary. That is why we didn’t spend a lot of time on that and we moved on to his technique because that was, really, my main aim for this lesson.

Before the lesson I prepared my own model of the heart because it made it a lot more easier to explain what ‘layering’ is all about. We looked all of the materials I prepared on the table and we tried to count how many I used in my picture and what they were.

My own piece

The art

Apart from the number of layers that my picture helped with, we also made a list of stages that we need to go through and I wrote them on the board: 1. the draft with a pencil, 2. the outline with a marker, 3. and more: all of the other materials, as many as you want and 4. the final one: glitter. The only thing that was obligatory for everyone was the topic, a heart as we had our lesson in the week of St. Valentine’s Day that our school was getting ready for.

This was a great process art lesson, an amazing process art lesson, in fact. I experienced it myself, while creating my own heart. Apart from just having fun, working with all of the materials and resources and experimenting with them brought me a lot of pleasure. Certainly, I was hoping that my students will also be able to experience that. Guess what? They did!

Different children chose their own approach to the resources and the number of different materials and layers to work with. I didn’t want to interfere with that, even though some of them chose only or two resources. I tried to suggest other solutions but I respected their final decisions. This was an interesting balance to those of my students who went over the top and used absolutely every single material that I had prepared. Or more, just because they found some random bits of coloured paper in the glue box.

Two resources only
Only markers)

My favourite thing was probably the fact that the kids went into the task with a completely open mind, willing to experiment, to try new resources and the new combinations of resources and to learn from each other, as well. We discovered that tinfoil can be torn and cut, it can be coloured and glued or glued and painted over. I shared with the kids that you can paint with acrylic paints and a wet tissue and I looked at how they liked working with our almost professional acrylic paints and that a piece of string actually makes a difference. I myself added a few more bits to my picture just observing what my students were doing.

One of my students came to our class for the first time ever and it was lovely to see how unexpectedly creative he is and how beautifully he applied the technique to create his heart.

Have a look at the beautiful pieces in our gallery…

Same artist, two pieces

Happy teaching!

January, January…Classroom management in year 2. A diary

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The Routine and al.

I think that, after a year and a half with my kids in the classroom and going to school everyday, I finally arrived at the point where I can say: yes, we’ve got the routine and yes, things work the way I want.

It doesn’t mean, of course, that all that time, until now we have been struggling and failing time after time (so, if you are a less experienced teacher, please do not despair) or that we are not bothered by the everyday issues anymore (of course, we are, that is what primary is about, issues, issues, issues, I don’t think that will ever go away). What I mean is that it took us all that time to arrive at an understanding what life is about: we come here, we speak English (we try!), we learn new things, there are some procedures, some traditions, some rules and both parties are aware of what we are doing here.

Our hello routine has been the same for a year now (I only realised it recently, with the first day of February as this was, last year, when we started to create our own songs), somewhere on the way we added little bits (Hello Master and the other roles, What time is it and counting days to Christmas or, now, spring). We have had our rules and our rewards chart. All this is in place and all this works.

The things that appeared recently, include:

  • the nicknames that some of the students choose for themselves on daily basis. It is not an obligation, you can stick to your name, of course, but I love to see them create and choose these depending on their mood and the day. More language production, always!
  • the rules that they wrote themselves that I turned into a poster (more of that below)
  • the birthdays we added to our months posters on the wall and the holidays and things to be looking forward to that we keep adding to it, too.

I was woried that, on coming back from a long, winter break completely wild and rowdy. They did, true, but the impact was somehow softened by the fact that my students were trickling back into the classroom, instead of arriving all on one day. That meant that we went through ‘September the 1st’ a few times in January ( = kids coming back, being too excited, too talkative, too forgetful about the rules) but, eventually, everyone got back and I got much better at dealing with it.

Story and songs

Last month was a bit lame as regards storytelling and it was my new year’s resolution to make up for that. ‘Splat the Cat and the Cat in the Moon’ came in beautifully as an extension of our communication lessons and we even managed to add a mini-project lesson to it, too. We all loved it and you can read about it in the separate posts.

Our main song is still our improvised Month Song and the kids are getting better and better and coming up with new ideas for our everyday singing. Despite the fact that we’ve been singing it for a year, the kids haven’t got bored with it and it is our way of saying how we are, what is good, what is not and what we want and whose birthday is coming up.

Apart from that we have been singing the Fraction Song from Hopscotch and we are slowly falling in love with the other videos on the channel. It is absolutely amazing that a song can be written about fraction and that it can be catchy, funny and very (very!) beneficial for Maths learning.

Socialising

There hasn’t been much of that, apart from us sharing a room, a lesson and activities so that is definitely something we should be working with in the current month…

Creativity

Here are our projects and mini-projects from January:

  • a role-play with emotions in our communication skills series
  • How do you see the world?, based on the story
  • ‘My favourite desserts’ which was our first project with A.I. Kids had to describe their three favourite desserts and the A.I. created illustrations for us
  • a few Fractions Fun lesson in which we used stickers, craft paper and just regular paper to help us understand fractions
  • coming up with names and nicknames for our lessons, sometimes a name lasts a week, sometimes it lasts a day. My favourite ones include: Crazy Dave, Pablo Picasso, Capybara Leader, Ironman, Air, Earth, Fire and Water.

Teacher

I have been a happy teacher in January. We had our test #2 and kids did really well. They barely needed help with the reading, they all just sat down and read it. My contribution involved only reading and nodding in agreement. I was really proud of them! We were reading!

We have also had a lot of good Maths lessons. To be honest, when I was writing a summary of the term to include in our end-of-term reports, I felt a bit dizzy, there was so much there and so many topics that are not so easy at all. And yet, we did it and we managed and not only that. We did a great job!

We are always having a laugh while coming up with our nicknames and it is lovely to see that some of them really to be creative, some of them choose a nickname just for this day, some – one that is closely connected to their personality, some, on some days, just opt for their own names.

A to-do list for February

  • more pairwork and teamwork (we’ve already started!)
  • a story and a creative project (we’ve already started!)
  • a new song (or songs!)
  • a long-term project (I am thinking)
  • just learn and have fun)

Happy teaching!

Christmas in the classroom! Festive craft with YL

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I decided to put all of these together in one post and share them here in case someone is looking for some try and tested activities. Some of them were done as part of our Art Explorers afternoon club, some were done in class, some were even completed during the long break and we made them just because some students (mine and not mine) wandered into the classroom with ‘Miss Anka, can you give us something to do? You have many interesting things here.’

Meaning? They can be turned into a real, productive lesson, with additional vocabulary and activities and song or they can be the add-on to some regular classes that simply take place in December. It is up to you, dear teacher.

Little angels

My, oh my, this craft activity is about ten years old. I have not invented it myself, I saw it somewhere online or in a book ages ago and I loved it so much that I decided to make my own template. Imperfect as it is, it works and the final result is still pretty. You can find the template here and some basic instructions are included there, too.

You can use some cardboard (if it is thin enough for your printer) but the majority of the angels we made were printed on the regular photocopying paper and they are all pretty and amazing. There are four main elements to be drawn and coloured: the face, the clothes, the wings and the thing that the angel is holding (and these can be also the four main elements that the kids are talking about in the end: I am happy, I am wearing, I’ve got, My wings are..) before the angels are cut up. Cutting is actually the one tricky element and for my youngest students I draw the coloured lines where they should cut. For the youngest of them or those who need help, I was helping with cutting the tricky bits.

In the end, the angels can also be decorated with the glitter glue markers or with the cotton which can be glued on the wings. The finished angels can be hung on the tree or they can stand on the shelf.

Christmas cards

I really wanted us to make the cards that can be given out to teachers, friends or parents and that is how this craft made an appearance. It had to!

There are many many templates for a card and many of them for the specific simple triangle Christmas tree silhouette, like this one here, but I got really inspired by my own friend, Jill, who made those with her son. However, instead of using scotch to form the triangle (I know my scotch likes to stick and destroy the surface), I cut out simple silhouettes in cardboard cards (destined to be destroyed or recycled).

I showed the kids the finished cards, we prepared the working space (the silouettes over the cards) and started to work on our trees. We used a variety of materials: regular markers, acrylic markers and crayons and pencils. Then we took off the silouettes and finished the cards with the glitter glue markers.

The finished cards that you can see were created by a mixed ability group, some were 5 years old and some were almost 9, some were made by everyone in-between!

Christmas garland

It has been a few years now, since I use the garland making as the whole class team building activity. What you need is a lot of glue sticks and lots and lots of strips of paper but because of the task and the volume, here, literally: ANYTHING WILL DO: coloured paper, photocopying paper, ready to be recycled photocopying paper, old newspapers and glossy magazines, all of it, as long as it is cut up into strips.

Modelling is easy, just showing the kids how to make hoops and how to connect them. Then the kids should be divided into groups, if they want to, or allowed to work on their own. This is good, because everyone can work in their own way and at their own pace and what matters is that, in the end, all of the pieces will be connected together to decorate the classroom.

It is a lovely bonding task with the aim (to decorate the classroom) that unites the whole group. I normally do it within a group but in the past I also did it as a cool end-of-the-lesson activity during an open lesson, with the parents helping out and one year, we also did it as a whole school competition, with a time limit for each class. Later, of course, we had meters and meters of garlands to decorate the whole school. Highly recommended!

Christmas tree

It was last year that I found out about the love that Andy Warhol had for Christmas and it was last year that I fell in love with the Christmas tree that he created. We followed suit and made our own last year and you can read about it here.

This year, I decided we would do it again but this time as a team effort. The task is not a small one and it takes time to decide on the theme, the colour and then look for and cut out and assemble the pieces (especially if you really want to stay within your theme), even if your tree is not very big. For that reason and to help build social skills in the group, we went for pairs. Truth be told, I also wanted to have a few trees to decorate the room…

Here are our beautiful trees, the one in red and the other one in blue. We will be making more with the younger group on Monday.

Christmas Marker Printing

This is to prove that marker printing can be adapted to any season and holiday! This year it happened only because the kids asked to do it during the break. We did.

You will need: permanent markers, regular markers, tinfoil, scotch, paper and sprinkler to do it and the more detailed instructions can be found here, in the November post on printing.
Here only a few photos (that I will add on Monday).

Christmas in style

Here is another lesson we had in December, devoted to style and Christmas symbols, easy and fun! I do recommend.

To be continued next year!

Happy teaching!

How to plan for kids without bending your back backwards. A five-step manual

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This post here is my response to the challenge set by my teacher-friend Michael. Challenge accepted. Let’s go, 5 steps.

Lesson aim

The first-est step. Always.

The session devoted to lesson planning on our YL course is called ‘What do you want teacher?’ and that is for a reason. Making a decision why we enter the room and what we want to achieve by the end of the lesson is key. Is the vocabulary the focus or is it a grammar point? Or any of the skills? What is the context? Do you want to focus on the language or the most important thing on the day is the work we put in developing social skills or building the routine? It might be something suggested by the book or chosen by the school curriculum but not always. And even it is, there is always room for adjustments and adaptation. At the end of the day, there is the teacher and there are the students in the classroom that matters most. The programme and the coursebooks are to be adapted.

After the aim is selected, there are more follow-up decisions to make, namely the selection of the focused task (aka the main productive activity) of the lesson?

That’s it, done. The main thing is done and it probably took about 5 minutes. The next step will be looking for things that will help make it happen.

Books basics

The coursebook and whatever it contains is already partially included in the previous step. Most of the time, this is what we use, for convenience and just because we can. The coursebook is not the enemy of course and there is a lot of useful material. Though, not all of it.

I presume the main activity has already been chosen and the next decision is regarding all the other exercises, activities, audio and visuals that are there (and in the workbook and teacher resource packs) that either match or don’t our aim and our focused task, or, in other words, our A or the lesson and our Z.

The most important thing to remember and the thing that is on constant repeat during our sessions and in my conversations with teachers is: the book is not there for us to follow to the letter and to cover and to include all the exercises.

Things you can repeat

In every lesson for YL there are certain elements that we can and that we should repeat because they help us construct the framework and the routine. They include either the elements of the routine: the hello song, the how do you feel today, the rules revision, the homework check, the goodbye as well the elements that are short-temporarily fixed: the songs we are singing in September, the games we are playing in the unit of toys, the story we are reading in the chapter on the jungle animals. All of these will feature in the lesson over a month. It is good to included them in the plan, keeping them on the side, in order to be able to use them.

The missing bits

Having got that far in the lesson planning, it might be the time to figure out how much time we have already taken out of the lesson time and how much time we already have left. Then, look at all the activities there are in the coursebook, all ready and waiting to be used, and, only if necessary, to replace them with some other activities, from another sources or self-designed.

Most of the time, the coursebook will do the job just fine.

Something for the balance (bits)

What I like to do at the very end, when the lesson is already ready, to have a quick look at everything, to check it for the contents and for the balance and variety

  • the ratio of interaction patterns
  • the ratio of different activities: songs, stories, creative and hard work
  • the ratio of new and familiar
  • the ratio of settlers and stirrers

And, when something is off, I fix it. Done!

Instead of a coda

Here are a few words of wisdom from a grandma teacher and trainer / mentor / observer:

  • we want good lessons to be our everyday but that does not mean that every single lesson needs to be an Oscar-worthy (or a Nobel prize-worthy) unit at the cost of the teacher’s sleep, peace of mind, family life or salary. Yes, I sometimes invest a little bit more into my teaching, in terms of planning, resources and time but, after all these years of experience, I also have lessons that are ‘just regular, no fireworks’.
  • we sometimes plan lessons and as soon as we get to school, out of the blue, we come up with something entirely different and it is the best lesson ever. Yes, that happens, but (here comes a very subjective line), it is the result of all the brainstorming and thinking that has already taken place. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have happened.
  • designing your own activites does not have to take ages and it does even require a teacher to be super creative. I personally find it much easier to prepare something for my lesson from scratch, rather than spend hours of looking through materials and resources to match the needs of my group and then, on having found it, still waste time on adapting it to what we (my kids, my course and our lesson) really need (here you can find some of the posts on material design).
  • our coursebooks have a lot of different resources and pictures among them which can be used in a million different ways with very little effort. A picture is an actitivity and you can read about it here, here and here.
  • in general, being a lazy teacher has a lot of benefits. You can read about it here.
  • here you can find another post about the everyday lesson planning

Happy teaching!

‘Teacher, did you do your homework?’

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Surprisingly, that is not as random a question as it might seem. Not only because we talk about the adverbs of frequency and my kids ask how often I do mine. I always say ‘Never’, just to make my kids give out the appalled ‘Oh!’ although, really, every day is a homework day because the lessons don’t plan themselves.

But there is more to that. With my older students, I do my homework regulary, especially when it is writing. My letter / story / essay not only serves as a model for my students but it also motivates them to do their homework. We frequently use my writings to learn how to structure the discourse, how to proofread and how to improve it. There is so much to it that I even ran a workshop with the same title a few years ago and, perhaps, a separate post will come out of it, in the future.

I would also like to highlight that, as a teacher, I am all for homework assignments, even with the very young learners, and I have already written about it here. Naturally, if the preschoolers can do their homework, then everyone else can, too and I have just realised that this deserves a post on homework with older learners (mental note #2).

However, today, I would like to write about something else entirely.

Let me tell you about the context

It’s been over a year since I started to work in a slightly different context, a primary school with a bilingual programme (which you can definitely tell just looking at the content here). Last year, in my year 1 group we used to give the kids the homework, once a week, Maths and phonics and we used to keep a journal with my kids, too. I shared the electronic materials with the parents, in order to enable the children to interact witht the content at home. All types of homework were optional, although, of course, I was checking everything that was handed to me and I kept a homework record, just to be able to analyse the situation and to check if there was any connection between the homework done and the progress made. Here is a spoiler: yes, there was.

This year, we decided to change that and to standardise the procedures across all subjects and both departments (English and L1). This year our final, seventh lesson, is a self-study lesson which we devote to additional work in the areas that need that most. I am not sure how the L1 programme teachers make their decisions but I decided to go for flexibility, sometimes it is English, sometimes it is Maths, depending on the day and how the day goes.

Each day we have about 20 minutes (aka one task), the kids work on their own and they are supervised by my T.A. The children work on their own, the task is a written one (at least at this point) and there is always some flexibility and differentation as, naturally, we have a mixed ability group. The task is always an extension of what we have done in class in the morning.

My T.A. always collects the papers and I check and comment on them and give them back on the following day.

What exactly do we do? (aka Examples)

Task type A: Just One More Exercise Like We Did In Class: This is probably the kind of a task that was initially intended for this kind of a lesson. I remember the debates with phrases like ‘what we don’t finish in class’, ‘what we didn’t have time for’ and ‘just some more practice’. This is absolutely very, very useful for the children (more practice!) and for the teacher (easy to prepare) but, admittedly, not the most exciting task type. As I have found out.

Task type B: Find My Mistakes: That is the type of a task that, unlike the one above, I need to write myself. It involves a task that we did in class but there are some mistakes in it. It can be a Maths task (the type we do with Petya and Alisa, our invisible students) that follows on the specific exercise that we already did together with exactly the same procedures and instructions, already completed but with mistakes. The main objective for children is to become a teacher and to check the tasks for potential mistakes. Sometimes all tasks already have a mistake (the easier option), sometimes some items are correct.

It can be an English task, too and in this case the children look for structural mistakes (punctuation or grammar) or factual mistakes, in case the task is based on a song or a story we have covered.

Task type C: Odd One Out or Add Yours: This task type is usually used for English and we used it a lot with vocabulary. So far it has been really handy with all the vocabulary as it allowed for differentation and open-ended exercises or verb phrases or noun phrases as we could practise simple collocations, for example: What goes with this verb: wash: your hands, your face, a book, your shoes. In this particular case, the kids had to find the odd one and, also, add their own option.

Task type D: Make a Task For Miss Anka: This is also a task that is always based on the type of a task we do in class in the morning but in this case, children have to create their own examples for me. It can be a word search or a snake (see photos), it can be their own mini-story or short sentences in English or their own text tasks or examples, for me to solve or to find mistakes. This has become the Number 1 Beloved Task, for all of us. A hit!

Task type E: Miscellaneous: Guess-Related: This is a mix of all tasks, another one of those that I prepare myself and very personalised. It is usually a task for English although it can be Maths, too. We did one when I wrote random sentences about my students (a set of 7 per child) with the adverbs of frequency (‘Sasha always plays computer games’) and children had to read and correct when necessary or give me points for guessing correctly how often they do things. In the Maths lesson on the Roman numerals, I had a set of numbers ‘about me’ and what they mean and the children had to decipher them and match them i.e. the number of meters I can swim = DC and so on.

Why we all just LOVE it?

First of all, I cannot repeat it enough (and in caps): WE ALL LOVE HOMEWORK. I always have, really, but now I am discovering the new levels and reasons for this love but it is also true that my kids love it, too and, when on an ocassion or two, the homework in English did not happen in lesson 7, my kids were simply disappointed. Not to mention that right now we start the day with ‘Miss Anka, did YOU do the homework?’ (or variations: ‘Miss Anka, did you see the homework?’).

Here are the reasons why I love these homework assignments:

  • my students have an opportunity to do ‘something more’ in English or in Maths, which is the idea of the homework itself and the most precious benefit.
  • these tasks were also an opportunity to develop my students’ reading and writing skills and, at this point in the game, these are crucial. We are past the basic phonics stage and the simple sentences stage so whatever they read and write, out of their own accord, is a reason to celebrate.
  • the kids could work in a more independent format, revising everything that they have learnt in the morning, doing it again, moving it to the ‘freer practice’ level, revisiting the task and, in a way, testing themselves
  • many of the tasks gave the kids an opportunity to make decisions and even to be creative and, for that reason, I love checking the homework, to see where the course of the day took them. I can tell you, easily, almost every morning, I get a hearty laughter and my comments are some variation of ‘excellent’ and ‘I love it’.
  • these tasks, by design short, flexible and open-ended, are perfect for mixed-ability groups and very often the students are in charge of how much they choose to do. The instructions include the minimal number of examples or sentences they have to do (adjusted to my ‘weaker’ students) but it is great to see that hardly anyone does just that and many, if not all, complete the entire task prepared. Naturally, ‘every little helps’ and I rejoice every single example completed. This approach, however, takes the pressure off the students and is very motivating in itself.
  • movitation is a huge factor here, as well, and, I’d risk saying that all of the aspects of the format and the task design contribute to it. Some of the children have to leave early (to attend to whatever errands they need to run) but they take the handouts with them and bring them the following day, although it is not obligatory.
  • many of the tasks are teacher-friendly. I prepare them daily and it really does not take a lot of time. The task type A requires no preparation, apart from making copies. Task type D is even better because, usually, it requires bringing only a piece of paper for each student. Task type C is also very simple as it can be a copy of the exercise done before, only with wrong answers and that, for a high-level speaker of English and a relatively competent Maths user, also – a piece of cake. The other two, type C and E are, admittedly, a tad bit more involving, especially the highly personalised type E, but, looking back at the results and the outcome, they are just SO worth it!

Instead of the coda

I am aware of the fact that we have some advantages because of the format in which we work at my school but I decided to share these activities and the whole approach because of the benefits it has brought us and because I believe that many of these task types can be adapted to, say, a more traditional EFL classes of a language school. And bring about the same exciting outcomes.

It’s been only two months of this particular experiment so there is definitely more to come!

Here are some tasks we have done already

English: Task type C: odd one out and add yours

Maths: Task type D: created your own task

English: Task type D: write your own (based on the story we did in class)

Math: Task type E: Guess (Roman numerals and the notes my student took of her potential guesses)

Happy teaching!