The language in this lesson was not quite our priority. We did not introduce any new language items and I really wanted to focus on working with the colour and help the students see the variety of colours at their disposal. We sang the song, talked about how we are and we revised the colours, briefly.
We looked at different colours and their shades to understand that each colour is, in fact, a number of colours. My younger students counted the shades and the older ones had a lot of fun reading the names of the different shades of blue, red and pink. You can find my presentation here.
The artist
In this particular lesson we had a group of artists, to introduce a range of different paintings with one leading colour. We looked at van Gogh’s Starry Night (blue) and Sunflowers (yellow), we had Kandinsky’s Mit und Gegen (red), Levitan’s Forest Gave (green) and Sue Williams’ Pink Pentagon (pink). We called out the main colours in every painting and we called out the contrasting colours, too.
The art
I taught this lesson twice, with my younger group and my older group, with some differences.
The younger kids, pre-K and year 1, were working at a much slower pace. They needed more revision, they took longer to get into the task and they were
Everyone got a strip of paper, a mixing palette and a box of watercolours. The task was to create ten different shades of different colours. I showed them what I created for red at home and we also sat around my table for a moment to see in real time what happens if you mix yellow with brown and yellow with white or black.
They were involved in the task and they kept coming up with more and more unusual combination. Even those few kids who entered the room with ‘I will not paint today’ (there is always someone!) eventually got down to work and started to create. They kept calling me over and over again, to come over to check out the new shade. And we actually managed to get lots of language out of it. They were either telling me what they had mixed or I was trying to guess, judging by the final product.
The older students managed to complete two tasks: creating ten different shades of their chosen colour and then also creating a picture in their chosen colour. Looking at how it was going on, I decided not to speed them up and to focus and mixing the colours.
I think that next time I teach this particular lesson to the older students, I am going to focus more on the language and after creating our ten shades of X, we are going to come up with some interesting names for them. That will require preparing a slightly different page, with some room to write but it looks like a fun activity with a lot of potential. Especially that they already really enjoyed finding out about the official shades of different colours.
Afterwards, we went on to painting a picture with our chosen colour as the main theme. My model made at home was a picture of rowan, to showcase red. The one I did in class was a sunflower ready to bloom, to showcase green. We also talked about focusing on the main colour and choosing something of a different colour for contrast. My students decided to paint pumpkins (orange) and the forest (green).
The exercise of 10 Shades can be used as a warm-up activity to many other lessons. We used in our Turner lesson and in our green lesson, too. I am planning to do a lesson on red and still-life and I will include that element, too.
The funny thing is the mismatch between the actual lesson and how good it was and the photos and creations that we have to show. In case of my younger group, we ended up only with a few ‘dirty’ pieces of paper and nobody would even be able to guess that they were the result of experimentation and creative discovery. I wanted to display them on our noticeboard but what happened was that they were taken away from me, as soon as possible. Meaning? They were dear to the budding artists. As was the lesson, hopefully.
Do I hear gasps of horror in the audience? Good. That is how I reacted when I said these words out loud, in a conversation with a teacher friend, retelling her some of the ‘recent events’…
Bear with me, dear reader and let’s see if you still gasp at the end of this post. Or maybe I will get you to at least look at the world through my eyes and give me a tiny little nod of agreement…
The ideal teacher?
‘Enthusiastic‘ is this one term that frequently appears on the list of words to describe an ideal teacher. Qin Zhang goes as far as saying that it is ‘generally recognised as one of the most essential and desirable qualities and characteristics of effective teachers‘ as one almost synonymous with energy or passion. What’s more, it is often presented as key to students’ motivation and engagement and, if you look long enough, you can even find advice how to be enthusiastic about what you teach (and in case you need it – use your voice and gestures, never admit that you don’t like your subject or topic or that it is not important). Enthusiasm then – a key factor in teaching.
Or is it?
Reading all these articles made me want to jump up and shout ‘Objection, Your Honour!’
My definition of a teacher, and especially a YL teacher, is slightly different and, surprise surprise, enthusiasm does not feature there as one of the necessary qualities. I put this list together based on years of mentoring and training of teachers who were either novices in general or novice teachers in the early years ESL/ EFL world. I based it on my own experience, the things that worked and the things that didn’t. I read about it, too, of course.
On my list, I have resilience and stamina and a variety of skills, I have resourcefulness and patience, I have creativity, energy and calmness and all three elements mentioned by my gurus such as Sandie Mourao (2018): the level of language, the knowledge of child development and of the appropriate methodology. A YL teacher is also someone who can teacher up or teacher down. But ‘enthusiastic’, well, somehow I didn’t think of including it. Truth be told, only recently did I begin to understand why.
Case studies
To illustrate that, I will use three case studies, from my professional life as a teacher, a trainer, an educational manager in all the contexts, countries and schools where I have worked and, at the same time, in none of them. The stories may have happened but in the way you think, not in the place you can guess and not with the people you know. No identification with actual persons or places is intended or should be inferred.
Case study 1: A senior teacher is asked to prepare a programme for the summer camp session. This senior teacher does not really have a lot of experience in the area and with this age group and, somehow, they do not bother to ask for advice, recommendations or support from more experienced colleagues. They just put it together, as best as they can because they really, really want to and they believe that something’s gotta give.
The programme has more holes than a slab of some Swiss cheese. There are no real ideas, no lesson plans, no support for the teacher or any attention or knowledge of any methodological principles. The only thing that there is – the enthusiasm and the Wow Factor . The camp lags from one day to the other, the teachers are confused and lost and just doing their best. But, because they are dedicated and passionate, they pull it through.
Execution mode: atrocious and unecessarily exhausting.
Aims: met as in: the world did not fall apart.
Case study 2: A teacher orgnises an excursion for her students, to the cafe, to celebrate. It is not a big group of students, there are four adults accompanying the kids, the paperwork is ready. However, the teacher doe not bother to check and to plan the route, there and back, because they are in the city city, not far from the school and the place is reacheable on foot. On the way there and on the way back, the group wanders around, they have to stop a few time to check the google maps, everything takes forever and on the way back, they take yet another shortcut and, to add insult to injury, they are caught in a blizzard.
Execution mode: messy and unnecessarily exhausting.
Aims: met (meaning: the world did not fall apart and there were a lot of lovely photographs)
Case study 3: An adult student stays after a lesson to talk about a relative who would like to work as a teacher. The contacts are exchanged and the potential applicant is advised to get in touch with the recruitment department of the school. She does and only later doe it become obvious that the enthusiastic would-be teacher has not graduated from the university yet, her studies are not even remotely related to education, she has never every taught in any capacity and does not even have any official confirmation of her language level. For all these reasons, naturally, the school does not hire her. However, she is advised to take a language test and consider starting the basic teaching qualification course. The potential applicant does not reply to these in any way and, her relative, the adult student who comes to the following lesson iss obviously disappointed and she tries to plead, with her teacher. ‘But she is so eager to start teaching. She really, really wants to be a teacher of English. It would be a dream come true...’
Execution mode: a great range of mixed feelings.
Aims: not met. I hope this person found her path.
Put the enthusiasm on the back burner!
It is easy to image that all of the directors, all of the managers, all of the parents and all of the trainers would love to see their teachers full of energy, stars in their eyes, joy in their gait, impatient to start doing their favourite thing, teaching! To impart knowledge, to help the kids learn, to help their students grow! That’s absolutely important and I hope that all my teachers, readers, colleagues have a chance to experience it on daily basis, this passion for what you do. I, personally, cannot imagine a life in which you to work without a tiny spark of happiness, just to do something in exchange for the salary. There are lots and lots of things that I do, solely out of pure enthusiasm and there are lots and lots of things that my colleagues and teacher friends do, on daily basis, that are not reimbursed financially.
But.
Enthusiasm cannot be the only resource available to a teacher. If it is and if it is there to cover up and to make up for all the other adjectives (such as organised, supportive, qualified, skilled, realistic, methodologically sane, planned, reasonable and professional), then I would like to make an objection and a strong one, too!
If we were talking about a different profession, nobody would even consider hiring a person to do the job of a doctor, a driver or a hair-dresser if the only thing they had to show for themselves was their enthusiasm or serving a disgusting cake on a pretty plate and claiming a Michelin star or two. It would not be a good idea to organise a festival without checking all of the bits, pieces and options and going for it just because we really, really want to have it.
No because it does not work like that in other areas and we should not have to deal with that in teaching, either.
Personally, I find it very, very tiring, as a teacher, as a trainer and as an educational manager. Mostly, because, in most cases, it translates into mess, confusion, teaching and learning below standard and last minute preparations and fixing problems as we (happily) go along. Perhaps, on my part, it is some kind of professional OCD but I like things to be in order.
This is not a post against enthusiasm and pession. Let’s not take it off the list, let’s just put it on the back burner, please.
Sandie Mourao (2018), Research into the teaching of English as a foreign language in early childhood education and care, In: S.Garton, F.Copeland, The Routledge Handbook of Teaching English to Young Learners, Routledge, p. 429.
This is the second post in the series and the link between them is the painter’s scotch that already futured in the first post but that is still one of my top 5 things in my bag. And here are some more…
The alphabet
We started the academic year with ‘Aa is for apple’ in our handwriting booklets and we spent the first three months on meticulous handwriting exercises. When we got to Zz and we were more or less familiar with the whole set of letters, I would write all of them on the top of the board for the kids to copy. I know that there are a lot of posters available on the market (and my school prints their own, too), but I just didn’t like them as they did not match my set of requirements: big letters, handwriting, font matching what we have been using and some visual representation, too, to help make them a little bit less abstract. With the visuals that we already know instead of some randomness such as ‘N – nest’, ‘Q – quilt’, ‘S – sparrow’, ‘Y – yak’ or even ‘X – xylopohone’ that are either very rare, well beyond the A1 level, not child-friendly or just vile (yes, I am talking about the xylophone that has the randomest pronunciaction of ‘x’ ever).
I made my own. I made two, one for 1A and one for 1B. The only thing necessary was an A1 piece of cardboard, a marker and a set of stickers.
It has spent the second half of the year on the walls of our classrooms and we used it as a reference point in all our writing exercises. The kids used it on their own and I used it, too, to direct them towards the correct letter. ‘Dd is for dog! Look!’. All in all, it helped us made huge progress with our literacy skills. No more than that but so much!
The chalk markers
When I found the Treasure of the Year, I was looking for something else entirely. I was getting ready for the Art classes, White on Black, googling for black drawing paper and white pencils. I found them and the lesson was great (you can read about it here) but what I also found the Solution of the Year and the Teacher’s Love of the Year: the chalk markers.
The thing is for the previous six months I had been forced to use the traditional blackboard and the traditional chalk and I hated every single moment of it, after all my educational like in the Polish state schools, fourteens years as a student and five as a teacher; hatred from the very bottom of my heart, because of the dry hands, because of the chalk dust on your clothes and because of the cloth. And then I found the chalk markers that I had not even known existed!
They are beyond amazing. They last a few weeks, they are just markers and they are quite thin so it is a dream to be writing with them and you can be very accurate and produce intricate letters and drawings. And they erase easily!
The trolley
I spent about three weeks of the academic year being miserable. I had two groups and two classrooms and the whole day was about moving from one to the other, together with everything that I needed in my teaching life: markers, toys, flashcards, cards, stamps, schoolbag, thermos, notebook, my magic wand, glue, craft paper, pencils…Most of the time wasting on it the entire length of the break. Every single time, every single day. The classrooms are door to door but, still, it meant making a few rounds, a few times a day. It’s not that I did not have a place to keep my things in either of these classrooms, I did, but it was still impossible to have two separate sets of cards, two separate sets of puppets, two separate sets of markers for the whole class.
The misery lasted almost a month until I had enough and I looked for solutions. I used to use boxes and baskets in the past, with my preschoolers but these would not work in these new circumstances. This is how I got my trolley, four metal shelves of happiness on wheels. Each shelf has its own theme and I keep there, going from the top: markers, flashcards and storybooks and puppets, cards, packets small scrap paper cards and handmade cards.
It is super easy to move from one classroom to the other or to roll it around the classroom while handing out boxes with markers. It is light so my students can help with it and they love doing it. They actually love to pretend play being flight attendants and giving out things. It made my life much easier.
One more thing! That trolley is getting me one step closer to becoming a Real Babushka!
The cupboards
One thing that I definitely had a chance to find out about myself is that I am thoroughly obsessed with order. It might have something to do with some form of OCD because mess and disorder makes me very unhappy. In the past, I must have lived in some kind of an ignorance but that’s because I was not obliged to share the classroom with another teacher on permanent basis. Until September 2023.
This was when I realised that I am deeply unhappy with the disorder on the table, on the cupbards, on the window sills and on the shelves. This was when I understood that I like my classroom near to empty, without all of these toys, games, books and (omg) candy that children have a full and unrestricted access to, which, of course, has a detrimental impact on the general classroom management. Alas, when you have to share, you just share and try to live to tell the story.
The cupboards made it possible and because there are two that I have got, I can be easy-going with how I organise the shelves and what I put things. In one word, I have room for everything. One full cupboard is filled with books, workbooks and notebooks and the other is my beloved Art cupboard, with all my resources, treasures, aprons and jars. They are all located at the back of the classroom and sometimes, when I teach, I like to glance at one or the other and smile. Peace and quiet, law and order in my resources.
The markers
There are many stationary items in the primary classroom, pencils, pens, crayons, coloured pencils but ‘Nothing compares to you’ is what I would sing to my boxes of markers. I think, perhaps, it might be because of the hours spent in the young learners’ and very young learners’ classroom or, in other words, because of the hours spent with people who are learning to hold a writing tool and people who are learning to use it to write their first words.
On behalf of my students, I prefer them to everything else, because, first of all, they are much easier to handle for an inexperienced hand, much easier to hold, requiring less muscle power to hold and to produce a line, very often much thicker and much lighter than anything else. Not to mention that because of the colours and the excitement of using them, they make the difficult and tiresome task of writing a tiny little bit more appealing and motivating.
We use them throughout the year to colour and, also, in the beginning of the year to write. I cannot really say exactly when we stop and switch to pencils and pens as it varies, from year to year but that is our general procedure.
So, apart from being a teacher of English, a teacher of Art, a teacher of Science (occasionally), I am also (drum roll) a teacher of Maths, year 1 of primary (or Key Stage 3).
I am aware that perhaps not too many of my readers have Maths on their daily timetable but I decided to share these ideas nonetheless. It is because they are all rooted in the different ways of encouraging children to get involved in the activities that are challenging, tiresome and not always easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.
For myself I simply wanted to leave a note and a record of the things we do, for future reference. On the other hand, I know that all of these activities have a lot of potential for the regular and the beloved ESL, for grammar and vocabulary practice or reading.
Treasure Hunt is a task that I have used many times over the years. It takes some time to prepare and to set it up, especially the first time, but once you do it and once everyone figures out the rules and procedures, it is a great task that my students have always loved and asked for if we stopped doing it for a while. The main idea of the task is that we go around the school, look for all the tasks hidden there and we solve them. Once all of them are completed, everyone returns to the classroom to check the answers. In the past, we used to collect new words, solve crossword puzzles with clues around the school. We used to look for answers to the quiz or instructions how to colour the picture. This year, we use it mostly for Maths, solving different addition, subtraction and multiplication tasks.
Usually, we go out as the whole class but this kind of a treasure hunt can be easily turned into a running dictation, with kids working in pair, one of them running, one – taking notes of the answers. This works especially well with really big groups.
As many as you can: most of my kids are huge fans of Maths and they approach the tasks with mountains of motivation. To be honest, I don’t really understand it, since my brain does not really feel happy around numbers and prefers words, languages and visual arts. But, I can almost risk saying it, my kids’ enthusiasm is infectious, so, in fact, I like teaching Maths.
‘As many as you can’ is one more task type that we do in class. It is super simple, it involves an A4 page of exercises that the kids work on individually. There is only specific rule and that is: everyone is allowed to do as many as they want or can.
I love this task because for the kids, it is an opportunity to approach a task without a lot of pressure and it works very well with a mixed ability group and for me it is an opportunity to see how well each and individual student feels about a particular topic. True, sometimes, the external factors get into the way and the number of exercises is affected by the kids’ mood or the levels of tiredness but, overall, it is a good indicator of how well everyone has learnt and how well they have assimilated the particular topic.
Oh, Petya: Petya is one of our invisible students and having him works very well in ‘find the mistakes and correct them’ tasks which we usually do at the end of the unit. I have already written about him before and you can find the post here.
Jigsaw puzzle is another idea that I have been using in our Maths tasks to encourage the children to go through the task from the beginning until the end. It is very easy to prepare because you basically need a page with the Maths tasks and another colouring picture (in the theme of the month, like Halloween or Easter). The colouring picture is cut up into pieces, into a number that corresponds to the number of tasks and they are put into separate envelopes. As soon as the kids complete one of the tasks, they can come up to the board, open the relevant envelope and take out one jigsaw puzzle. I also like to put the correct answer on the envelope, to give the kids a chance to also check their answers. Once all the exercises are complete, the kids put the jigsaw puzzles into a picture and we glue these into out notebooks. The pictures can be coloured in the end, as an option.
Password, password! is a variation of the previous task – we collect tokens for every exercise completed, only in this case, these are letters that, together, a part of a password. Kids work on their tasks, invidually but they take turns to come to the board to solve a task and to uncover one of the letters. This task works wonders for bonding and building the class community. Just like the colouring page, the password can be adapted in any way that fits the theme of the month, the number of the exercises or the number the kids in the class.
One of the first passwords that we did this year was: ‘We love Maths and we are fantastic!‘ I wrote it on the board, with the numbers for each letter and I used hyphens to break the sentence into words. But it can be anything!
Well, is it something that you could use in your lessons? Please let me know!
A paintbrush, that took us all by surprise with how beautifully it caught and preserved the paint. We all kept staring at it for a few minutes, in admiration.
Today, I would like to share with you a project that we have been a part of for the past two months and that I am hoping will continue until the end of the academic year: our own month song.
Ingredients
a song and a melody that will be used as a model, in my case it was January Song from Sing Play Create.
a group of kids and a teacher to manage
optionally: an audio of the melody, ours was Frere Jacques, it was easy to find.
Procedures
First, a story: Our lessons in December, with my year 1 kids, started with different Christmas songs as we had already abandoned the regular Hello songs somewhere in December. When January arrived, I wanted to devote a part of the lesson to a chat about things that we do in that month. And to introduce that slot, I was looking for a song. I found it and quite easily and it was perfect – short, call and response style and with a relatively simple melody. We sang this song throughout the entire month. Then, February came and I started to look for a song that we could sing. I did not find anything that would work for us, something easy and short, without too many cultural references that are not at this point relevant. I didn’t find anything that I could use. I decided we are going to create our own.
In the first lesson of February, I explained to my students the song situation and encouraged them to think about our own song. They made a real effort and we ended up with a song in 1 a and a slightly different song in 1b. I wrote the songs on the board and we photographed the board. Every day, at the beginning of the first lesson, I would take out my phone and start singing for the kids to repeat. Some of the phrases were familiar to kids, the others I helped to translate.
We repeated the procedure in March and ended up with two verses in both groups that we sang for a week.
The next step was of course the kids’ versions. I did not prepare them for that in any way and on one of the days, I simply asked: Does anyone have an idea for a new song? And they did. Right now we do it every lesson and there are always some kids who are willing to share their ideas.
Why we love it
The song is a perfect choice for creative singing (and speaking). It has got a simple melody which we already know very well. The song follows the pattern of call – response so whatever idea the leader comes up with, the group responds, by simply repeating the line.
The lines are short, easy to create and to repeat even for beginner children. It is an advantage, too that the verses of the song follow two patters: either a simple phrase or a short sentence so pretty much anything can be used. Some of the verses we created were like that: ‘March, March’ (only two words repeated), ‘Make snowmen’ (an imperative), ‘Birds and bees are flying’ (present continuous), ‘Flowers grow’ (present simple), ‘We are very tired’ (personalised sentences with the verb to be).
Some of my kids have an idea but they don’t have the language and that works, too. They sing the first line, in Russian, and I respond with the equivalent in English. It also helps with some verses that are not appropriate but are, at the same time, a result of my students experimenting with the language. We have had a few cases of a line like that appearing as a call and me replying with ‘La la la’ or with ‘Sasha is not singing’, to signal that some things are not be accepted.
Kids love this part of the lesson and, on a typical day, we have about 4 or 5 verses, sometimes more, sometimes fewer. Some of the kids sing the verses, some prefer to say them already and it all works.
I am just overjoyed because they are producing the langauge and in this previous week, we have seen an interesting new trend or even two. Some kids (following my example) started to create songs about how they feel on the day (‘March, March. Sunny day. I am very happy. But I want to sleep’) which is their extended and musical answer to ‘How do you feel today?’. Some children sang a song about their favourite month (usually related to their birthday). We had also a few crazy versions of snow in July and another Christmas in the summer. One way or another – lots and lots of language creativity.
Another thing that makes me really happy is that this creative activity appeals not only to my stronger students but also to some of my struggling students and, in general, is great for mixed ability groups. It is easy to create your song, for example by changing one or two words in the verses that your teacher or friend sang. That’s easy to do. Plus, all students are creative, even my beginner beginners. They have an idea and they want to share and since some of the ideas are shared every day, they stay. My student Sasha came up with the idea of a sick rainbow two weeks ago and now he remembers himself and encourages us to sing ‘The rainbow is sick’. We do.
Last but not least, this is our little tradition, our routine, something that we do as a community. And that makes it precious, too!
I am quite curious what is going to happen to this project in April and in May. It is already good and exciting and worthy of sharing but who knows what else is there for us…I will definitely be writing about it in the future!
A suggestion from a student that we should add a ‘Danny Go!’ song to our lesson, written by my student, in his first year of learning English.
Time to admit it, we are a strange breed!
First of all, our work stories are not really glamorous. There are no celebrities in them, no events that make the news, no interesting places and no brand names. Speaking from experience here, in comparison with the copywriters, marketing experts, nurses and doctors, engineers and accountants in my life who also come back home and share theirs. What teachers bring from school are the tales of behaviour issues, funny quotes, developmental stories, getting things right and getting things wrong.
And then even as teachers…a while ago, I met a friend whom I hadn’t seen for a while and we were catching up on life and work and all things related. I shared my adventures and my recent and relatively short-lived (thank heavens) period of revisiting adult EFL. My friend was at the same time in awe and taken aback. ‘In awe’ happened because this year added a nice few pretty-looking lines to my resume as the weight that would come with the names of international banks and IT companies or with the noble and serious sectors of the high levels, Business or Financial English. ‘Taken aback’ came about as a result of my attitude, a tired ‘Yeah, whatever’ that turned into bored or openly dismissive as the conversation went on. Apparently, I should have been very excited and proud.
It is not that I did not enjoy these lessons or that I did not do a good job or that I was not grateful for the enthusiasm with which my students came to class. I did and very much so (you can read it about here) but that was nothing special, just the everyday.
Take baking, for example. If you bake and if you have been baking for some time, a batch of cookies or a batch of brownie is not a holiday, it is a must. It doesn’t mean that you will eat delicious cookies every single time, things go wrong, of course, but more often than not, if you take out your flour, soda, sugar and chocolate out, you can expect that at the end of the road, there will be good cookies. You have this experience, nothing to celebrate and nothing to write home about.
Same with teaching. After all these years, putting together a good lesson for an exam class or for a C1 group is kind of a must, not a special event. And yes, the respectable clients add a layer of fine veneer to the whole experience or, if we are to go on with the baking metaphor, a layer of icing but that’s it. And, really, students are just students and everyone deserves a good lesson, a top-notch businessman, an bank CEO or a five-year old boy.
That is why there is no special pride or excitement. It is a job well done. Still, it is only a job.
Teaching kids is not only a job.
It is also a job but it is not only that. It cannot be only a job when you are not only teaching your subject, whatever it is, but you are also taking part in bringing up the little human and helping them to understand the world, to learn how to function in it and how to interact with the rest of it that is not you. It cannot be ‘only a job’ when you are surrounded by the stories of these lives, the joys and the dramas and when whatever you are planning to do in class might be affected by everything that happened out of the lesson time and that simply because the little people cannot yet disassociate. It is not only a job when you get to sing and jump to the songs or to get your own hands dirty practising for the art classes.
The things that make me gasp, the things that make me get excited.
My kids doing a pair-work activity: it can be a very simple activity, just a ‘guess my flashcard’ game that involves nothing but reciting all the words from the set, until you get the right now. All the exciting elements, like asking a full question, taking notes of the answers or repeating the activity with a new partner, they come later. But to see them work on their own, keeping the conversation going and moving from point A to point B of the activity, this is precious. Introducing it is a process, it does not just happen, it does not happen overnight and introducing it takes time, a few lessons, weeks or months, depending on the child’s age. But it is possible and it is beautiful. When it finally happens, it is yours and can be used forever and ever. Here you can find a post about my experiment and a controlled and conscious way of introducing pairwork with my pre-school group. A successful one, too!
My kids creating their own songs and producing the language because of a song: I realised (and not such a long time ago) that I introduce some songs only because they contain a pretty chunk of the language, hoping that soon (or even sooner), these structures will become a part of what we can say. A good example here can be ‘What’s your favourite colour?’ by Super Simple Song. It is my favourite colour song, not because it is the easiest (that would be just ‘I can sing a rainbow‘, because that is, mostly, just a list of the words, ideal for a beginner group) but because it includes a very good question ‘What’s your favourite?’ and a very good answer ‘I like’ which, when mastered, can be used with any topic. I love singing and my kids love singing (not everyone loves the same songs, of course) and I say that right now, six months into the course, singing and creating our songs based on what we have sung already is one of our favourite activities. Right now, we have a habit of creating a song for the month and many version of it and we also love creating our own versions of all the other songs we sing. Here you can find a post from four years ago about un-singing the song. We still do it!
My kids beginning to do their task truly independently: What I mean by that is the shift and the huge stepping stone from doing a task, in the coursebook, workbook or any handout, step by step, led by the teacher, not copying the teacher’s answers but taking the exercise or the task in small bites, moving on together as a group of individuals, waiting for everyone to a situation when the teacher sets the task and everyone does it at their own pace and in their own way, choosing for example parts of the exercise that they deal with. It is always a big day for me and it is a sign that kids are becoming more independent learners. The expert is right next to them but they don’t need the support that much. Why? Because their zone of proximal development has expanded a little bit! Hooray!
My kids making decisions: I cannot tell you how many times, in this academic year, I have used the phrase: ‘It is your decision’ in response to anything that my students did, said or asked, as regards their English, Maths or Art lessons or any actions in class or during the breaks. I actually started to wonder if they know the phrase or if they can produce it as I always use English and Russian when we talk about it…It is necessary to include opportunities to make decisions but it is also necessary to develop the awareness of the fact that some things belong in the category ‘we do it, I cannot opt out’, such as tests. It is an interesting process and I am getting a lot of joy out of it. And pride.
My kids improving their literacy skills: The literacy skills and their development are probably the greatest challenge of the first year of English in primary but at the same time, they are the source of the greatest joy, passion, hype, reward and happiness. Firstly, because it is a long-term process and you can enjoy bits and pieces of it throughout the entire year, every single lesson and in many different variations: blending and segmenting, writing your own name in English, checking out our alphabet poster for reference, shared reading, looking at the materials and reading things themselves, just before they saw them, not because we were actually doing it, applying the phonemic awareness that they already have, choosing to write anything in English, especially when not induced by the lesson and the teacher and so on and so forth…Or, because they are able to, they proceed with the task independently (see point 3).
The life outside of the classroom
You can easily imagine that all these stories would not be enjoyed as much by anyone who is not a teacher. I am visualising me coming back home, meeting friends or getting in touch with my brother and sharing the story from this week:
‘Guess what happened today in class? Sasha wanted us to sing ‘Danny Go!’ in class and he asked to add it to the lesson plan. And he wrote it himself, almost 100% correctly! Look at the photo! (see: above). He only started to learn English with us in September! And now he writes all two words and I only help him letters, he writes them from memory!’
I think it is fair to say that the response would be, most likely, a polite smile or a nod, or, if the people are used to these kind of stories, maybe even a funny meme. Only a fellow YL teacher would appreciate it more. Or the readers on the blog, perhaps. It is all good. These are the stories that I bring from work.
What about you? What are the things that make you happy in the classroom? Please share in the comments!
Before we got to watch the video and to play the game, we went through a series of 4 lessons that were devoted to professions. During these lessons we inlcuded activities such as: introducing the vocabulary, matching the jobs with different accessories, miming the jobs, separate words and sentences in Present Continuous (‘A teacher is jumping in the toilet’), categorising the jobs and interviewing each other (‘Do you want to be a teacher?’), talking about what we want to be and don’t want to be, introducing a song, and even starting a project about one Alfonso Pomodoro (more on that later).
In order to make sure that we have some variety of resources and approaches, I also introduced a video from Steve and Maggie. I used it before because it is a nice story that includes a few jobs and some ideas why they are good or bad or easy or difficult and it can serve as a background for a whole range of activities.
This time round (and for the first time, too), I decided to use the video as a framework for a role-play. I wrote the mini-script on the board with ‘a Steve’ (‘I don’t want to be a teacher’, ‘Look, I am a doctor. I can…’ ‘I don’t want to be a doctor!’) and ‘a Maggie’ (‘OK. Abracadabra!’ and ‘5 minutes later’) and we read it together.
It was the first time we did any sort of a role-play with my students in year 1 and that is why I decided to do it as a whole class, with two students being involved at a time. I had only 5 students on the day and that is why it was possible. I modelled the game first and then the students were joining the pair of actors. Kids took out cards from the pile, at random, and acted based on that.
Each round involved two students and they had a go at three jobs with ‘Steve’ getting bored with all three jobs and deciding what he (or she) wants to be in the end. I have a mixed ability group but the stronger students could actually come up with some things that a profession can do as well as with a problem that would put them off. Some kids focused only on choosing the jobs and limiting themselves to ‘I don’t want to be a doctor. It is difficult!’
Why we like it
The game worked well. Even in its minimal version, it gave us an opportunity to practise the key phrases, ‘I want to be a teacher’ and ‘I don’t want to be a teacher’ as well as the jobs, both in speaking and reading.
The video created a great, easy-to-follow framework for our game and it was not necessary to create the context, the story did it for us.
It worked well in a mixed ability group because we could extend and minimise the amount of language
It was done as a whole class activity, with only two kids involved at a time but I am hoping that in the future we will be able to repeat it, in pairs or small teams.
It gave the kids an opportunity to be creative, not only while talking about why certains jobs and good or complicated but in choosing what they want to be in the end (‘I want to be a blogger’ or ‘I want to be a girl’ or ‘I want to be a student!’). One of my students also decided to use the card three times in three different rounds becuase ‘I want to be a judge!’.
We had fun and the element of surprise kept the kids in the audience interested. We laughed a lot!
This time, the whole lesson planning process started with my decision to spend the whole month of January doing fun things with the colour and it was an absolute necessity to start with Vasilyi Kandinsky. This particular lesson did not follow the traditional routine and the painting that is usually the centre piece of the lesson, this time made only a cameo appearance that illustrated what our artist liked to create.
The language
We started in a very relaxed way and in the first lesson we talked about our favourite colours. We also learned some more advanced colours names.
I wanted to get the kids to associate colours with emotions, feelings and music, just like Kandinsky did, and that is why our next stage involved watching a video with the unusual instruments and deciding how we would present each instrument and its sound with a colour. After each short clip, we paused the video and shared our views. Only then did I introduce the artist of the day.
With the youngest group we focused on the basic colours which we revised using two of my favourite songs: What’s your favourite colour? – with looking for colours around us and with My yellow car – with pausing and guessing what product is going to be bought.
Afterwards, to get the kids ready for the alternative approach to colours we looked at the set of cards which I prepared, the everyday objects in unusual colours. I asked the kids to look and to say what they think of the idea, using a simple ‘I like it / I don’t like it’. It was a lot of fun!
Kandinsky, Composition VIII
The artist
The reason for that was the fact that Vasilyi Kandinsky spent a large part of his creative life not only using colours but also trying to understand them (‘Effect of Colour’). After we shared our ideas about different pieces of music, we watched a clip of the video ‘What’s the Sound of Colour‘ to check whether we agree with his interpretation. Sometimes we did and sometimes we didn’t.
As a follow-up to that we looked at Kandinsky most famous creation, Composition VIII, but only to have something to represent him with. We did not analyse the painting apart from the title because the name went nicely with the idea of colours and music.
Our lesson with the little kids was so packed with activities that I had to skip the artist stage, in order to make sure that we had enough time for our creativity. Nonetheless, it all worked very well!
The art
I did not want to create anything in the style of Kandinsky not to steer away from the colour itself. For that reason I chose spread painting – it has the colour at its centre, it is not very challenging and it can be done with a variety of different paints.
Before the lesson, I prepared the paints (acrylic and gouache), the pieces of thick cardboard (photocopying paper box cut up into bits) and the paper. I used the thicker paper sheets used for watercolours to ensure that the paper holds up the amount of paint and water and I decided to go for the A3 size, to give the children more flexibility with the spreading movement and the feel of being real artists who work on bigger sheets.
In this kind of a lesson, it was absolutely necessary to demonstrate the technique and in order to do that, I put my paper on the floor, made a decision about the colours that I wanted to use, put a few blobs of different colours and then showed the students some basic movements to spread the paint on the paper (straight, wavy, circular, semi-circular). Apart from that, I also had a few pictures of my own, prepared before the lesson, with different movements, sets of colours and, in some cases, the additional drawings with a marker. These already had titles, too.
Afterwards, we just went on to create. The most important decision to make was the colour selection and we discussed that while I was walking around the room and monitoring. It was great to see how these decisions were made and how the kids were becoming more confident with the movement and the technique. In the gallery below you can what they produced and how their favourite things are reflected in their creations i.e. ‘the rabbit’ created by a fan of rabbits and Malevich or ‘the goose’ that features in many of our lessons because a goose is my student’s spirit animal. I am also extremely proud of the blue – mustard – silver creation which is the title photo because it was a first for one of my students who so far had been only sitting and participating in our debates. He finally felt curious and ready to get his hands dirty and with what result! I just love the combination of colours here.
Initially, I wanted everyone to name their paintings but then I gave up that. After all, this was our first approach at the abstract art and I just wanted them to enjoy the process without pushing them too much. Our paintings are now on display and we can always get back to them and give them their titles later on, when we are more comfortable with the non-figurative art.
It was a great lesson! Next week I am going to get to repeat it with my younger kids and then, there is the rest of January to celebrate colour!
Here are some of the pictures that my little students created! It was one joy of a lesson, with my students discovering the world of the modern art and the brand new technique, experimenting with it and being proud of their creations. Amazingly enough, they really took to looking for ideas in their paintings and trying to name them. This was just precious.
A3 paper, glue and scissors and a stack of newspapers and journals (gardening, furniture, fashion, kids, music, animals)
music, for atmoshpere
Andy Warhol’s Christmas Tree
Procedures
This lesson in this format was done with my older primary students whose language is on the level of A2 – B1.
We started with bringing up Andy Warhol whom we got to know in September (more about this lesson here). As always, it was a pleasure to find out that our Andy Warhol Chebourashka was a very memorable lesson. My students did rememember! We talked about Andy again and especially about his love for Christmas (I do recommend reading about it here).
We looked at the Christmas tree he designed and at the technique (collage).
Afterwards, I showed all the materials and I started to make my own collage to demonstrate the technique.
We looked at the journals and newspapers, leafing through to find the theme. I suggested a few (a colour, an object, a topic) and just allowed the kids to think about it.
All this time I was making my own: I drew a big triangle and started glueing the pieces to match my theme (Nature).
Kids were working, cutting out their pieces and composing their collages. They were also looking for pieces for their friends. All this time we were having an open class dicussion about different artistic decisions and the bits and pieces that match or do not match the individual collages.
In the end, we briefly demonstrated all the trees, together with the title.
In order to create a more festive atmosphere, I put on some non-invasive instrumental music, Christmas-themed.
Nature (by the teacher)
Why we like it
The collage was a success. The students got really involved perhaps because the activity gave them an opportunity to be creative without requiring any real artistic skills, drawing, sketching or painting which sometimes can be a challenge.
It took a while for the students to choose the theme but it is perfectly natural because they needed time to leaf through, to see what is available and to make up their mind and to select something. But I was really happy because it was clear and obvious that they really did make a decision and focused on the colour, one specific item or a general idea to represent. What’s more, I could see that the kids themselves were happy and proud of their choices especially when their pieces were completed.
The task became a collaborative one although only by accident. Once it became obvious what everyone was working on, we all started to suggest and to offer pieces that we found in the journals that we were looking for. ‘I’ve got a yellow sofa here. Do you want it?’, ‘There is a princess here. Does anyone need it?’ and so on. It started with the teacher but the kids picked up on it. It is definitely something that I will be introducing purposefully the next time we do a collage.
We used the A3 paper but the A4 sheets are also an option and the trees will be easier to fill in as the smaller the paper, the fewer the elements.
We started with drawing the triangle on the A3 paper and went on to fill it in with the items. Two of my students did not have enough time (and the chosen elements) to complete the tree in one lesson. We are going to finish next week, we have this opportunity. However, that made me think that it might be a good idea to choose a topic, cut out all the elements and them compile them into a tree, making a conscious decision regarding the size of the tree and opting for a smaller version if time or resources are limited.
I presented the idea of a combined technique: a collage and drawing, to fill up the space with own drawings, if needs be, but, in the end, not one of my students decided to use this option this time.
The decision to put the background music on was a good one, too. It helped to create the atmosphere and, after a while, kids asked for the permission to put on their favourite songs which was granted and we ended up working and singing together.
As regards the language production, a lot was going on because we were chatting throughout the lesson but I have to be honest about one thing – my older group are already a high level, some of them very close to fully communicative in English and even bilingual. That is why I didn’t need to do much to encourage production in the way an EFL teacher would. They wanted to talk and we did, in English. However, there are other options for the lower level and the EFL/ ESL students. I am still to try these in class but off the top of my head, I would go for:presenting the collage with the title, calling out the names of all the elements of the tree (or as many as possible), choosing the character who might like this kind of a tree. I am quite likely to teach the same lesson on Monday next week and, if I do, I will be updating the post soon.
We did it in our Art classes but it might be a fun activity for a regular VYL or YL class, perhaps even with teenagers.
Here are some of the Christmas trees my students created:
Yellow. Still in progress. DragonsAround the houseBeauty
This post starts in the classroom (Surprise, Surprise!) and they are generated by me but only in connection with what I do in the classroom and how my audience reacts to it. This is everything, aside from the thoughts of the experienced teachers, aside from what we find in the coursebooks, aside from what we learn about in different workshops and lectures. How the kids react to what happens in the lesson…
And since most of my professional life is spent in the presence of the very young one, the reaction and the feedback is immediate, without the intermediary help of the admin, parents or educational supervisors or trainers. If the lesson is good, you know it. If the lesson is bad, you will know straight away. If you can read the signs and reading there must be a special part of the brain devoted to looking out and reading these signs, while teaching, learning, monitoring, supervising and growing goes on happening.
Hence this post.
Teaching the whole child
This is definitely one of the key words in the EFL / ESL methodology, which teachers, trainers, bloggers, authors are more than eager to recite, together with the ZPD, scaffolding, short attention span and many more. ‘Teaching the whole child‘ will also be on that list.
In order to understand what might be hiding under this term, it is necessary to have a look at the list of the key development areas outlined by Sandie Mourao and Gail Ellis: personal, social, emotional development, communication, language and literacy, problem soling, reasoning, numeracy, knowledge and understanding of the world, physical development and creative development. These are naturally the areas, typical for the early years child development, first and foremost age-related and not specific for any particular context, L1 education or the EFL/ESL education. But, especially, because of that, they need to be included in both and in teaching of any subjects to the early years children, be it their L1, a foreign language, Maths, Art or judo.
Carol Read can also be a point of reference. She has quoted her C-Wheel in quite a few sources and apart from the overlap with the areas mentioned above, she also included a few others that would help to better understand the idea behind the whole child. These are: care, community as well as context and connections (i.e. family and school), coherence and challenge as well as the cultural context. The most important factor, the child, is in the centre of the wheel.
But the quote that really made an impression on me comes from a post I found on Teaching Channel where, on top of some practical solutions for implementing the approach, I have also found this way of explaining what it means to be teaching the whole child: ‘by being responsive to children’s understandings, interests, and abilities, allowing them to deepen their natural curiosity and their eagerness to want to discover and learn more’.
It deeply resonates with me because of the conviction that I have held for a long time (and which I have tried to brainwash my trainees with over the years) that the most important thing that a primary or pre-primary school teacher can do is to sit on the carpet with the kids, literally and figuratively speaking, too, in order to change the perspective and to try to see the world from their point of view. This change of the point of view is absolutely crucial when it comes to classroom and behaviour management, staging, lesson planning, craft, literacy skills development and many many more.
‘That is very well but what is your point here?‘ you might be wondering.
It seems that, sometimes, regardless of our good will, professionalism and even experience (yes, I know what I am talking about), we, the teachers tend to allow our methodological principles take precedence over the child in the classroom and choosing between ‘what I need to do today‘ and ‘what the room needs‘, being the professionals that we are, we choose the standards and the rules, not the audience, not the child. It is all well-intentioned and well-meant, of course, but it might not mean that it is also the best decision as regards the said audience.
In this post today I would like to call the teachers to teacher down a little bit! Remember about the standards, methodological, institutional, cultural and what not, but to put them on the back burner and to focus more on the six-year-old beloved crowd insead.
Below, the three areas and some classroom stories from yours truly.
Storytelling
A story first. It was a lesson with my adorable monsters, in our fifth or sixth year together and it was a story lesson. I got everything ready, the audio, the text, the words to be pre-taught, the comprehension task, a game and, most importantly, a while-reading task. I wanted to be very clever and, since the story had a repetitive element and it was perfect for prediction. I wanted to have us read and listen to it but with pauses, with the kids discussing every stage (‘What happened?’ and ‘What will happen next?’). I thought it was a brilliant idea and, perhaps, it really was. However, once we started to go through the story, after two ‘episodes’, one of my students, one of the more confident ones, looked at me and said: ‘Anka, can we just listen to the story?‘
And I don’t know what it was, the tone of voice or how effectively she used intonation to convey meaning, carefully stressing ‘listen’ in the whole phrase, or maybe it was the faces of the rest of the class showing a mix of dedication but this simple human fatigue that made me realise that I overdid it.
I took a story, a great story, that we would be interested in listening to or reading, something humanly exciting and fun and I turned it into an exercise, a learning activity, a task, at the same time, and totally unwillingly, making it dull and tiring, simply because of the context – our classroom. That made me gasp in shock.
Naturally, we read to learn, to extend our vocabulary and to practise grammar and to develop the reading comprehension skills and all the other skills, too. However, a story is still a story and it deserves to be enjoyed, in a human way, even if we are in an A1 classroom full of kids, at least to some extent, at least in a balance with all the very teacherful activities with a clear learning focus.
In the classroom that can be done through: including a variety of stories, coursebook stories, YL exam stories and storybooks, traditional stories and videos, including elements of reading for pleasure, a school or class library, just listening to a story for fun before any reading comprehension tasks are introduced, giving the students an opportunity to express their views about the story and accepting different opinions, also those negative ones, basically anything that we might do with a story in our real L1-life.
‘My students don’t like to sing!’
It is one of the most common comments that my trainees make and one of the most common questions they ask right afterwards and that is: ‘Should we make them if they don’t? How?’
Well, the short version according to Murao and Ellis is 8 reasons to bring songs into the classroom. Carol Read mentions a few more in her book. In an earlier post here, written based on the materials I found in different sources, there are 60 reasons, for the kids and for the adults. There are so many of them that we have enough justification to change the famous song’s title into ‘The classrooms are alive with the sound of music!’ Or, at least, they should be!
But, with all that in mind, or, almost against all that, what we do with a song in our L1 life, as adults or kids, is to simply listen to it and to enjoy the fact that it is on. Sometimes we dance to it, sometimes we might sing some lines, sometimes not. As people, we are not expected to know all the lyrics, to like all the songs and to sing along every single time. We definitely do not listen to complete some comprehension tasks or to focus on a particular structure or an idiom. There is a danger, then, that by imposing all of these on our students we will be destroying the organic character of this resource.
Again, it would be a good idea to remember the need to teacher down songs in the classroom a little bit. Accepting that not all the students will love all the songs equally and that not all the students will want to sing all the songs every single time seems to be the first step here, although that does not mean that songs will disappear from the coursebooks, curriculums and lesson plans. In the everyday teaching, it might mean simply starting with ‘Let’s just listen to the song!’ before we get down to the vocabulary, grammar, lyrics and all the follow-up activities and asking the kids whether they like the songs or not. Getting the students involved in the song selection is another important way of teachering down here and either focusing on those that they actually really do like and including their suggestions in the lessons, too.
‘We have so many things to do today!’ or about the lesson plan
This time the story took place in my Playway 1 lesson, at the end of the year, somewhere in the food unit. Those who have used the book might remember the listening activity in which students have to listen to a boy, one of the charcacters from the coursebook, who talks about his likes and dislikes and mark these accordingly in the picture. One of my students, Sasha, a 6 y.o. boy, didn’t deal with the task very well. ‘I like pears’, would the character say and my Sasha would say: ‘I don’t like pears’ and then, to my horror, he would cross the heart in the book, instead of colouring it in. Every single time Sasha did not agree with the character in the recording, he would loudly comment and then mark the answers according to his preferences.
I was watching him thinking the following thoughts: Oh, Lord, he is not following instructions, he does not understand what to do, he will not pass any of the exams and, in general, I failed as a teacher. None of which is true. I am happy that, despite the way I felt in the lesson, I reacted as a true educator, I went for the child’s well-being and I did not insist on the ‘correct’ answers. Thinking of the lesson afterwards, I was laughing out loud at my professional silliness. My little student told me, in English, what he thought of certain food items, he clearly understood what he listened to and he reacted to the content. The problem was not me or the child but the activity itself that assumed that the little people are able to disentach themselves from the activity and to de=personalised the content in order to complete a task. This made me look in a completely different way at the YL coursebooks content and it has been a turning point for me.
This same approach can be applied to any lesson plan. We go to school not to teach the lesson plans or the coursebooks but to teach the kids, the particular kids in our classrooms. Not everything that the great authors at the famous publishing houses thought of for the particular lesson, unit, activity will be appropriate for Masha, Katya, Sasha, Tomek, Agnieszka, Juan and Pierre that are entering our classrooms. Not everything that we have prepared for the lesson might not be the best idea on a Monday morning after a long break etc.
In the everyday life teachering down might mean:
evaluating the coursebook material carefully as regards its relevance for the particular group of kids and appropriate adaptation and adjustments as regards the content, the cultural context, the emotional context, the personalisation or the lack of, etc
adapting the lesson plan on the go, depending on how the students are feeling on the day. Pushing the day agenda at all cost will not be effective and might result in frustration.
putting yourself in the kids’ shoes while preparing the activities for the lesson and trying to answer this simple question: Why would they want to do it?, apart from the obvious, the fact that a person in the position of authority, older and taller than them, someone that knows their parents and is also able to assess them is bringing this to class and tells them to do it. Is there anything in the exercise, activity, story, listening, song that they would want to do anyway? And if it is not there, can we add it?
while things are not going to plan, looking at the situation through the kids’ eyes to better understand what is going on in order to deal with it more effectively.
involving the kids in the decision making process about the lesson, as regards the songs to sing, the games to play, the stories to read or even the order of the activities (when possible), to share the responsibility for the learning but also to find out more about the audience and their preferences.
Codaor what this post is NOT about
I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I am calling for a complete abandonment of all the methodological principles, present-practice-production, good teaching standards. Far from it. ‘Organic’ is a nice word to use to describe a lesson and a teaching approach as long as it is not synonymous with ‘I didn’t bother with planning the lesson, we’ll just go for it!’
It is an invitation to keeping your eyes open and to not forgetting that our students are very young and that the age will be very often the most important factor behind their behaviour and attitude. On the one hand. On the other hand, they are people, too and that we can act as people, too, instead of being teachers 24 / 7.
What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments!
And make sure you come back for more because the second part of this mini-series is coming up! ‘Teacher down!’ is ready now. The post about the need to teacher up is already being written!
Happy teaching!
Bibliography
Sandie Murao and Gail Ellis (2020) Teaching English to Pre-primary Children, Delta, page 10 – 11.
Carol Read (2007), 500 Activities for the Primary Classroom, Macmillan, p. 7.
