This is the third episode in this series. Don’t forget to check out week 1 and week 2 first. There is the week 4 post, too!
Starting the lesson
Nothing has changed here and I have to say it is a lovely feeling to have it ‘just happen’, at least for a few minutes of the lesson. It is a confirmation that things are happening and according to plan and that, eventually, we are going to extend this ‘law and order’ to the other stages of the lesson, too.
How do you feel today?
According to what I planned, we added two more feelings ‘I am ill’ and ‘I am scared’, one to describe how we really feel in class (Hello September, Sneezing and Coughing!), the other one because I want to have it ready for all the stories to come. It might be also a nice phrase to use when we talk about emotions, also to say ‘I am not scared’, which is a very positive affirmation to make anyway! At the end of week 3 we have a total of 13 adjectives and phrases to use to answer this question and I have two more expressions, as suggested by the kids themselves. There is more to come soon!
Apart from that, I decided to let the kids take over and to take turns to ask the question to each other. At this point we are still doing it in a very closely-monitored way, with the teacher supervising and the kids simply answering a question from one student and then asking another one, in a chain. It took some time of the lesson as the kids were taking their time to choose the following child but it was definitely worth it! I was observing the children and I did notice how seriously they took the task and, actually, how much pleasure it gave them, too, to be involved in such a way.
Songs
We have practised all the songs introduced before and since we already have quite a few, it is possible to ask the class to choose a song to sing: ‘Do you want to sing ‘I can count to 20’ or ‘Count from 10 to 100′?’ to give the students an opportunity to make decisions about the lesson. That is what we did.
We also sang ‘Pete the Cat, I am rocking in my school shoes’ and during some of the lessons, this turned into almost a theatre, because all the kids wanted to sing and to perform all the actions, to sit at the desk, to eat something (they quickly reached out to their bags for a snack) or to read a book, in exactly the same way as Pete does, lying on the floor…This was definitely the song of the week for us!
From the new song, we only introduced ‘Have you got a pet?’ which we needed to introduce and to practise the verb and the structure which was the theme of the week. We also played the game with the spinner from wordwall, in which we sing the song for students, one by one, spin the wheel and the child in question answers ‘I’ve got a tiger. I like it. It’s a good idea’.
Rules and Classroom Language
We have been revising all the classroom verbs and phrases we introduced in the previous week and we devoted one of the English lessons to introduce and to drill some more advanced classroom language that include:
Can I go to the toilet, please?
Can I drink some water, please?
I sit nicely.
I listen to the teacher.
I am a good friend.
I have a question.
The two new phrases include: I don’t fight and I don’t shout, because this is exactly what was happening. I normally try to avoid using this kind of a language and to focus on a positive way of formulating the rules but one of my groups needed a very serious reminder.
Rewards chart
There have been not to many changes here. With my group A, the chart is no longer necessary, we only need to revise the rules and bring them back, to remind the kids about the behaviour we want. My group B need the rewards chart constantly but with the use of the chart and the rules, we are slowly moving towards the point where we want to be. I have some students who struggle with managing their emotions but there has been some progress in that area, too.
Time
Not too many changes here. We keep using the system we have created and it works. The kids are more familiar with the lesson plan, the different length of breaks, the changes of teachers, work in progress, nothing else.
Story
This week I decided to introduce a phonics story and, because of the theme of phonics, animals and have got / has got, I went for ‘Hen’s Pens‘. Overall, it was not as exciting or popular as the other two we have done so far but because it is a different style, without a song but it worked well.
What we did:
introducing the new vocabulary and reading
describing the picture on the cover
looking for dots and zigzacs around us
listening and talking about it
doing one wordwall activity on rhymes together on the screen
a reading activity done individually, on paper
a colouring picture for those students who wanted it
Accidentally, just before this lesson, one of my students found our paper copy of Usborne stories and he brought it to the classroom and looking through the book, he found there our story. This way, he created a link to our following lessons because I want to use the story in a few shared reading activities.
Socialising
These are the things we did in the previous week to faciliate the community building:
we continued doing everything we have done so far: making decisions, choosing songs and activities, helping with the resources.
we added a little bit of student – student interaction during the first stages of the lesson (How do you feel today, see above)
we did a few activities in Maths and Science to help the kids work in teams. We had two team activities with one student working for the group – two treasure hunts. In Science students took turns to find clues what to draw in a picture (types of plants), in Maths, similarly, tasks (addition and subtraction to 20) in order to uncover the secret phrase (‘Maths is very interesting’). In another Maths lesson we also played with subtraction and posters and small objects. In this game, kids had to work in small pairs to solve the task (put the hands on the poster to leave the required number of animals visible and take out the small objects out of the box).
we also tried to play ‘I spy’ in one of the Maths lessons, this time in pairs. It was mildly successful as a speaking activity but they did get a chance to sit together and work on a task together. It was a necessary step and I would like to repeat it again in week 4.
Creativity
We have had some opportunities for creativity in this week, too!
we created a beautiful picture of different plants in a Science lesson. It was guided (my instructions) but the execution was up to students. Of course, they really wanted to take them home.
in our final Maths lesson, we decorated the first page of the notebooks that we will start next week
there was a follow-up colouring picture for the story, for those kids who wanted to get one
Teacher
This is only very much Anka-relevant and it might not work or be important for all the other teachers in the world. I decided to take a note here, though, to remember and to see how these things will be changing because they also affect how we work as a group and how I feel, too.
I managed to convince my fellow classroom dweller to rearrange the tables in one of the classrooms so now we have a beautiful U and I am happy.
I am planning my lessons with the resources and boxes online, in order to be clever about all the carrying things around.
Tuesday was quite difficult in terms of behaviour, very jagged and patchy, hence annoying and tiring and I went to school the following thinking that, no matter what, ‘I will have a good teaching day and the kids will have a good learning day!’ and somehow we all did. Partially, it was due to this approach, partially, because I prepared activities to help me achieve it. I noticed that I have been setting my expectations and the level of challenge a bit too high for my kids, without taking into consideration the fact that it is still only week 3 of our adventure and that we spend together 20 hours a week, some lessons are early in the day, some lessons are late in the day and they all simply cannot be just amazing. Although they can be good and they can be better if all these factors are taken into consideration. I did and Wendesday and Thursday were much better.
Please make sure you read the previous post in the series here. Here is the week 3 post and the week 4 post here.
Starting the lesson
Nothing has changed here. We continued doing everything the way we did last week but I did notice (with joy) that this week it all went smoothly and that all the kids were answering smoothly and without my support, gestures and hints, even when it was the school admin who came in to check the attendance officially which normally takes place in lesson 1 and which sometimes overlaps with my roll call.
How do you feel today?
This stage of the lesson didn’t change at all in the previous week either. On the one hand, I was a bit guilty about not introducing any new phrases / adjectives but, only other hand, it is not bad that some elements stay exactly as they were, not to overload the kids. I am definitely planning to introduce them in the upcoming week.
Songs
As regards the new songs, yes, we do have some! First of all, Who took the cookie from the cookie jar is now officially a game and students themselves remind me of it. First we go over all the structures and gestures (the set displayed in the video) and we watch the video together and ‘rehearse’ singing. Afterwards, we play together and it is lovely to see how the kids get involved. Generally, the idea is that we play in a chain and the last student ever is the ‘kangaroo’ who took the cookie, however, it did happen a few times that the kids themselves decided to own up to having taken the cookies, in the middle of the game and we just accepted it and played on. What is more, one of my students, went out to the cloakroom and brought back his jar of cookies to be used as a prompt while his turn came. He also promised to share the cookies with the class during the break which was sweet and it made every happy. It was also great to see that the kids picked up on the melody and the structure and we made the first attempt at our own version of the chant…
I also wanted another song for numbers and I found this one, from the Singing Walrus: Count 10 – 100, in a slighlty upgraded version. ‘I can count to 20’ was a huge success, not only because of the easy lyrics but also because of a simple dance routine and that is why I decided to create a similar one for the other song. I will not dare to include a video here and the decription will be muddled, I fear. The main idea is that there is one arm movement for each number and we end up with waving our arms joyfully for ‘one hundred’. I am happy to say that it has worked very well and now we have to educational brain breaks for the Maths lesson.
A special bonus is the third song from Pete the Cat. To find out more about, please scroll down.
Another lovely realisation was the fact that my students chant and sing the songs during the breaks, out of their own accord, and even at home. As one of my education parents said ‘Who took the cookie is a very dangerous song! Sasha sings it all the time at home!’ Music to my ears!
Rules and Classroom Language
We have been revising all the classroom verbs and phrases we introduced in the previous week and we devoted one of the English lessons to introduce and to drill some more advanced classroom language that included
Can I go to the toilet, please?
Can I drink some water, please?
I sit nicely.
I listen to the teacher.
I am a good friend.
I have a question.
We have a poster for each, with the phrase and a picture and I came up with a gesture for each of them. We introduced them, we drilled them, we played a few movement games and we came up with a chant, too. There was a handout, too. The posters are on the wall and we start with reading them in the beginning of each lesson.
I wanted to introduce two more (‘I ask if I can take something’ and ‘I ask if I can write on the board’) but they turned out to be too complex for coming up with a gesture and to repeat and I need to rephrase them.
I am also compiling a list of a few more sentences for us to start using, some of them based on the classroom procedures, some of them based on the students’ behaviour that we will need to work on.
Rewards chart
As I mentioned last week, I changed the list from the board to a small whiteboard because, first of all, I need the board for other things and, second of all, it is easier to carry my mini whiteboard with me around the classroom.
Another interesting thing happened. One of my groups (9 kids) is already at the point when they don’t need a rewards’ chart. They are involved, they want to study and, although they are still kids and they have their crazies, these do not require any real intervention and it is easy to deal with them only through reminding them of the rules. So far so good.
My other group (12 kids) are a bit more rowdy and I have two troubled souls there and the rewards’ chart works really well for them as a reminder of what we want and what we don’t want, together with the rules. We had at least two very tricky situations but we are dealing with them and I am hoping that my tricks, the help from the school psychologist and the parents will help me work on all of that.
Time
We continue using the clock and I noticed that more of my students get a better understanding of the clock and the lesson time versus the break time. The only thing that I added to the lesson time is also a small box with the number that the big hand of the clock needs to reach.
The lesson plan I mentioned in the first episode of this series worked much better and more effectively this week. I used it in almost all the lessons in the previous week. It worked very well with 1A who already have their favourite Maths game and who try to include it in all the lessons as the final point. One of my students actually remembered the name and he made an effort to remember how to write it from memory in order to be able to add it to our plan.
Story
Traditionally now, Thursday (my last day of the week) is a story day in English. This week I decided to introduce the kids to Pete the Cat and specifically to ‘I am rocking in my school shoes’.
I love this story for many reasons:
Pete the Cat is cool and apart from the narrative and the dialogues, it includes songs and they are cook, rock songs, a nice addition to the very kiddie-like Super Simple, for example.
This particular story includes about seven or eight verbs in the Present Continous, related to the activities in the school (I am playing, I am reading, I am writing, I am adding, I am painting, I am sitting, I am eating, etc). I decided we really need them in order to describe what we are doing and to check that everyone is on the task (‘Sasha, are you writing?’) etc. This is a topic that is very easy to introduce, you can play Abracadabra and have a low-prep movement game and, very soon, we will be able to use it to tell stories.
The story also includes the names of the places in the school which I want to focus on in the upcoming week and have the kids use them, after I have labelled all the doors in the school in English.
So far, we introduced the game and practised the verbs in a game, we watched the story and try to sing the song and we had a small reading / drawing task (‘I am eating’ + add your own noun). As a surprise, kids also got a Pete the Cat colouring page to do at home. Naturally, Pete the Cat is coming back next week.
Socialising
These are the things we did in the previous week to faciliate the community building:
more students’ help with giving out and collecting back resources (handouts, markers, glue, notebooks) and with cleaning the board
some opportunities for making a choice: ‘Which song do you want to sing?’, ‘Which game do you want to play?’. I also tried ‘choose the next student’ but they are still too shy and it did not work very well. I nominated instead.
I kept an eye on the kids interacting with each other and I also started a journal for both groups, to keep track of these observations (related both to progress and to behaviour and socialising). I plan to add notes to it only once a week. I noticed some new friendships forming, between girls, between boys and in mixed groups, I noticed kids playing together and collaborating during the breaks and during the outdoor time. I noticed Sasha sharing his cookies with the whole group, although social skills are not his strong point yet or the kids policing each other during some lessons.
Creativity
This was only our second week but I decided to include some creative tasks in Maths or in Science and it turned out that this is exactly what the kids needed. We did three of those: a plasticine model of a plant (Science), making a book with plant types (Science) and a real project in Maths ‘Let’s make something out of shapes’ All of them were very successful. How do I know? Right after the kids saw the finished product and the resources, I got flooded with the same question coming from 12 or 9 different directions in the classroom: ‘Can we take it home?’ and although I would love to put these beautiful creations on the walls, I gave up. I collect all the other handouts and put them in their portfolios, here, I did not have a heart. Everything beautiful went home. I only took photos.
Teacher
This is only very much Anka-relevant and it might not work or be important for all the other teachers in the world. I decided to take a note here, though, to remember and to see how these things will be changing because they also affect how we work as a group and how I feel, too.
We finally have the internet connected in both classrooms so I can use a much wider variety of resources, powerpoints, videos, songs as well as all of the online resources. This has an impact on the variety and it helps to keep the kids’ attention and focus.
I am not very happy (as in: AT ALL) with the tables which are ‘the typical tables in the classroom’, in three rows of four. I hate these rows and because I share the classroom with the L1 teachers, I cannot move them freely. Not only because they are a bit on the heavy side but also because some of the breaks in-between the classes are short and there is no time to reorganise the room before I leave it. I am not sure. I am thinking.
The other issue related to the fact that I am in two classrooms is this: I am in two classrooms which means that I am in none and I am slowly turning into a Mary Poppins, only not with a bag but with a set of boxes that are my treasure chests, boxes that I carry around…Much as it is true that my arms need some toning and some workout and it might actually be beneficial for me, it is another thing that gets on my nerves. I cannot change the set-up, I will be sharing and moving around, but I think I have a solution. I just need to reserach it.
As regards, the resources, in general, I am better organised and that makes me happy.
The academic year has started and this September I have found myself with a new group of children, in a new school and, in general, in a completely new environment. It is a bit of a whirlwind and how else? Greenday’s song with the most amazing title and line ‘Wake me up when September ends’ was not written for teachers but it surely feels like it was. However, primary school kids, a new academic year and a new course means only one thing: working on the new class routine. This still stands true.
All of it might a blessing in disguise. A teeny tiny bit uncomfortable because I am literally out of my comfort zone (and my classroom) but how beneficial! Instead of bringing the kids into my world and my kingdom (aka my classroom), I get to take what I know and believe in and to organise a new world and a new kingdom (and a classroom!) accordingly. These new circumstances are an interesting opportunity for me to reconsider what the class routine means for me, what are its main elements and how they can be translated into a new environment.
I decided to keep a diary of the first month to see what is going on and this way create a mini-series on the blog.
Starting the lesson
Where I teach at the moment, the kids have their classroom and they can go in and out of the classroom, outside of the lesson time, whenever they want. For that reason, we cannot do the line-up outside that I like so much. What is more, the school does not have any bells or any signal system as there are primary and pre-primary classes, with a slightly different timetable and that means that anything ringing for one would be a distraction for the other. However, that also means that we have no official start of the lesson.
For that reason, as soon as it is time to start the lesson:
I put the hands up and we count down from 10 to 0, while I am counting on my fingers to give the kids a few seconds to calm down
We exchange hellos (‘Hello everyone!’, ‘Hello, Miss Anka’)
We do the roll call (‘Let’s check who’s in today!’ ‘Sasha?’ ‘Here’) – this is not only for me to mark everything in the register and to learn and to practise the names of all my kids (after two days, I already remember all of them, phew). This is also for me to check who is sitting where (as this can change) and we connect it with ‘checking’ that everyone’s names are on the board which is especially important for the kids who do not yet recognise their name in English.
How do you feel today
This was something that I knew I wanted to be a part of our routine from the very beginning and for many reasons, too. It is always a good idea to gauge the mood of the audience, regardless of the age or level and I like to know how my students are feeling on the day but it seems to be especially important for the younger kids in the beginning of the course and super super important for the year 1 students who are getting used to the routine and who are also getting used to being away from mum. All these emotions can help with dealing with different behaviour issues and they will be necessary to help the kids develop empathy towards their classmates. Plus, a lot of useful language that we will need to tell stories.
Anyway, we started the week with the six basic ones (happy, sad, angry, scared, sleepy, OK) but more adjectives and phases followed and by the end of the week we also had ‘hungry’, ‘tired’, ‘thirsty’, ‘not so good’, ‘energetic’ and, suggested and created by one of the kids, ‘I miss my mummy’ (in the photo above). Which, by the way, is an absolute treasure – my student not only noticed the need for this flashcard / emotion, he decided to share it and to produce the card following the conventions of the genre (aka all the cards I produced), including the colour, the size, the style and the choice of the symbols. He also insisted on my writing the English version of it and on displaying it on the board. And you know what? He read the audience exceedingly well! This is now one of the most popular way of answering the question…
I have them all on very simple foam flashcards and they are displayed on the board in the beginning of the first lesson. We go over all of them, ‘reading’ them and using the accompanying gestures i.e. even if the flashcard has only ‘happy’ written on it, we say ‘I am happy’ and I demonstrate the gesture for that.
Afterwards, I ask all the kids, in turns, ‘How do you feel today?’ and the kids answer. This stage is followed up by a song, which we sing together and which creates a nice balance, an individual task / production followed up by a group, choral activity. At this point we are using ‘Hello Song‘ from Super Simple Song.
We also write on the board the following: the day, the date, the weather, the subject and the time slot.
Songs
We have only started the course so there aren’t many songs that we know or that we have managed to choose as our favourites. However, I try to include songs as punctuation marks because we have a long day and although the kids get their snack and movement breaks, they still need some stirrer in the middle of the lesson. So far we have included the following: A is for Apple (English), I can count to 20 (Maths) and Who Took the Cookie from the Cookie Jar (as our final game in the Maths lesson, which, at this point, is the end of the English day. This will have to change in the following week).
Rules and Classroom Language
Speaking of rules, I think I have broken a few myself. I HAVE NOT introduced any rules in the first week. The teacher and the trainer in me are appalled at such a negligence. Or, rather, they should have been but they are not. Oups, sorry not sorry.
As I said, I am in a new environment and I decided to act on my intuition and now, after the first week is over, I am actually having a blast trying to analyse what I did and what I did not and why.
I introduced a few basic gestures – expressions in the first lesson and we have been revising these since but I have chosen only the few basic ones that help us navigate around the lesson and the classroom and these are: Yes, No, Stand up, Sit down, Stop, Quiet, Wait. A very, very basic set indeed, to help us survive but not to overload the children.
As regards the actual rules, things to do and things not to do, I took things easy because I wanted to see the kids first, to observe them and to analyse them in order to figure out what are those 5 basic rules that we need first. Again, to help us survive but not to overload the children. Now I know and we are going to be introducing them in the upcoming week, together with more advanced classroom language.
Rewards chart
Our rewards chart was another area that I started to introduce rather cautiously, almost hoping that I can get away with not using it at all. Alas, after two days it turned out that we will need it after all, as one of the tools to help the kids regulate their own behaviour. I am planning to use it temporarily only. I have already written about this kind of an approach and about all of the advantages and disadvantages of rewards charts in general. If you are interested, please follow the link here.
So far I have been using the names on the board, however, because of many different reasons, from tomorrow, we are starting with the hand-held chart.
Time
This is a brand new element that I did not use to think of much before or to include in the routine framework. Until this summer and until this academic year. Here are the two tools / tricks that we have used this week with my kids.
Lesson plan, or, a list of activities we are planning to cover in class. You can read more about it here. The points keep disappearing as we complete the activities. This helps the kids see the passing of the lesson and to manage their time and behaviour in time. Naturally, all the elements such as ‘songs’ or ‘games’ create something to look forward to in the later stages of the lesson
A clock on the wall: we started the week without a clock and I lasted two days, upset, confused and angry. This is how I realised that Anka, the teacher adores a clock on the wall, to start and to finish the lesson on time and to understand how and if the pace of the lesson needs to be adapted. On day three the clocks were already on the wall and we used them for the benefit of the kids. One of the things that we put on the wall is the names of the subject (English, Maths, ect) and the time slot of the lesson, for example 9:00 – 9:45. Afterwards, I say: the lesson finishes when the big hand gets to number 9 on the clock, while pointing to the hand and the numbers on the clock. I have noticed that children started to respond to that. We will continue.
Story
I have also decided that our last lesson of the week (Thursday) will be a story lesson, in order to finish the week on a high note, to do something lighter and to be able to take advantage of everything that a storybook can offer. This past week my story of choice was ‘Too Loud’ a story by Kay Widdowson about a cat mum who walks through the garden asking everyone, bees, frogs, dogsg and ducks, to keep quiet and only in the end do we find out that it is because her kittens are sleeping and she doesn’t want them to wake up.
We used the story to practise reading the names of animals, CVC words and not and to read and the kids were involved through the phrase ‘Stop. You are too loud’. This phrase is an adaptation of the line that features in the story, although I adapted it a little bit. I decided to use only ‘too loud’ instead of ‘too loud’ and ‘too noisy’ and I have developed it into a full sentence that we can use in the classroom on daily basis.
Socialising
Turning a group (or a class) into a community is a long-term project that will take us a large part of the academic year. I have already written a bit about it here. We have already started to work on it and in the first week:
we have done a lot of activities whole class, to give us all a sense of one organism
I have tried to use the kids’ names whenever possible and to keep them on display all the time, to give us all a chance to learn them. We have also done a few rounds of ‘Can you read that name?’
we have tried to play a boardgame, for me to see to what extent the kids are ready to take turns, to obey the rules, to work in small pairs
I have been observing how different kids work and interact with different partners although they hasn’t been a lot of mingling yet because I did not want to introduce anything mess-inducive before the kids are ready.
we have worked a lot with markers because it is fun and markers are an easier writing tool but it also helped with the simple team work as the groups of two or three students were given a box of markers to share and to take care of
I have started to involve the children into taking control of the classroom and the lesson i.e. inviting them to be the teacher, assigning a student to give out and to collect resources.
Don’t forget to check out the next episode in the series, at the end of the week! There is more to come! Here you can find the story of week 2, week 3 and week 4. You can also check up on us after four months in the classroom. Here is the newest addition to the series.
The amazing staircase in the tenement house by Max Berg in Wroclaw
Looking for songs
We have lots and lots of sources of amazing songs that can be used in the YL and VYL classroom. The first and the easiest one of them is your coursebook and the main advantage of it is the availability and the close connection to the curriculum. The songs often combine the vocabulary and the structure of the unit and both the teacher and the students have an easy access to it. The songs’ lyrics are in the kids’ coursebooks, they are often built around the characters from the coursebook or the stories in the coursebook. As a teacher, I have been using the songs from Superminds and Playway to English by CUP and Discover with Dex by Macmillan and I am a huge fan to the extent that I would recommend them as a supplementary material to accompany another coursebook, too.
Another amazing resource is youtube and the brilliant channels such as Super Simple Songs, Dream English Kids, Fun Kids English or Mother Goose Club, full of amazing, kids-friendly, visually beautiful productions that can be used in our EFL classes even if the content does not match the curriculum 100% accurately. After all, this can be an opportunity to learn some more vocabulary or structures.
Sometimes, however, it happens that, no matter how hard you try and how long you look here and there, the song or the chant that you really need is nowhere to be found. There is a way out, too, because you can create your own songs! From scratch!
Max Berg Cafe, Wroclaw
Creating your own songs: Starting from the rhythm.
This is more of a jazz chant than a song and I took the general idea from Carolyn Graham. The thing you need is a set of words to practise, divided into groups based on the number of syllables: 1-syllable words (cat, dog, frog, duck), 2-syllable words (hamster, snake, lizard), 3-syllable words (elephant, guinea pig, ladybird) and 4-syllable words (chameleon). You arrange them, in any way you want, following the pattern, for example: 2, 2, 2 – 2, 2, 2 – 2, 2, 2 – 4, 1 OR 3, 3, 1 – 3, 3, 1 – 3, 1 – 3, 1 – 3, 3, 1.
Hamster, lizard, snake
Hamster, lizard, snake
Hamster, lizard, snake
Chameleon, cat!
OR
Elephant, ladybird, cat
Elephant, ladybird, cat
Elephant, cat
Ladybird, cat
Elephant, ladybird, cat.
Practically any rhythm will do, especially if you start clapping your hands and stomping your find and chanting.
A similar technique can also be applied to any repeated sentences. I really like mixing affirmative and negative sentences connected with ‘but’ and ‘and’, for example
I like cats but I don’t like dogs.
I like ducks but I don’t like frogs
I like lizards but I don’t like snakes
What about you? What about you?
Max Berg Cafe, Wroclaw
If you are looking for more ideas of this kind, please check out the book by Carolyn Graham (see below).
Creating your own songs: Starting from the melody
This, by far, is my favourite way of creating the songs I want and the songs I really really need. The only thing that it takes is a melody that the teacher is familiar with and filling it up with the lyrics that match the lesson’s theme and aim.
During the YL course sessions, I was visiting one of the breakout rooms while the trainees were discussing the ways of adapting a certain material and, together, within a couple of minutes, we came up with a simple song that could be sung in the lesson on pets, with to the melody of The London Bridge is falling down. It went more or less like that:
Little dolphins cannot dance, cannot dance, cannot dance.
Little dolphins cannot dance but they can swim!
Naturally, this little verse can be replicated with all the other animals and verbs, according to the vocabulary content of the lesson.
Max Berg Cafe, Wroclaw
Creating your own song: Starting from the language
This one is probably the most challenging one because there is no basis here, like in the previous two. However, at the same time, since you are not bound by the rhythm or the melody, you can put together any text you need. I have used this approach while creating a chant for one of the groups with whom I had a double lesson, with a break in-between. This is the song that I put together to signal the beginning and the end of the break. The melody for this song was completely made up.
Let’s take a break.
Let’s run and play.
Five minutes. Five minutes
Let’s take a break.
Let’s drink some water.
Five minutes. Five minutes.
Let’s take a break.
Let’s go to the toilet.
Five minutes. Five minutes.
In one of the Science lessons for my pre-schoolers we were doing the food chains and I really wanted to make it more interactive and fun and this is how we ended up with a play with an alge, a fish, a squid, a dolphin and a shark. The story was built around all the creatures noticing their predator in the ocean and hiding. While taking turns to sing the song
I am a little, little alge
And I am happy
At the bottom of the ocean
Where I live
Oh, no! Look! What’s that? It’s a fish!
Let’s hide.
In this particular lesson we made the finger puppets for all the characters, practised the song a few times and then we all participated in the game aka the performance. It was definitely a success.
The only trick with writing a song like that would be coming up with the message to convey, verbalising it and sticking to the appropriate number of syllables in each line. As can be seen in the examples above, the verses don’t rhyme and they don’t need to. As for the melody, it can be anything and, once you’ve got it, it is a good idea to record it, for memory, even if only on the smartphone recorder.
Max Berg Cafe, Wroclaw
Here you can find my other posts about using songs in the VYL and YL classroom
Where to start if you have never sung before (here)
Can you hear some desperation, dear reader, in the title of this post? Rightly so. I started to write this post after one of the sessions of the summer camp that I took part in. My kids were amazing, of course, clever and eager to learn and, really, we did have a lot of fun. At the same time, looking at how they interact with each other, I could not believe my eyes and my ears. Despite the fact that many of them were already eight and nine, their social skills were on a disastrously low level. Practically anything that involved taking the other humans in the classroom into equation was a huge challenge for way too many of them. I did sigh with desperation, once and twice, and then I rolled up my sleeves and started to introduce pairwork, even though these were not my permanent students.
You may wonder why it shook me so much and why I decided to fix it. One reason is, naturally, my professional obsession with maximising production in kids and, really, I cannot imagine teaching a group of primary school children with the teacher at the centre, all the time. It is a waste of time and a waste of opportunities because kids of that age are capable of working in pairs without constant supervision. And if they do, they automatically produce more language.
However, there is more to it, of course because kids who work in pairs are more independent and more autonomous as learners and they have an opportunity to work with a variety of partners and to make friends and to bond with the group. This, in turns, is a better prognosis for the general classroom and behaviour management because you are less likely to get into trouble and to disrespect someone that you actually like and respect. If only you had a chance to get to know them and to like something about them.
Pairwork, yes or no? YES. One, big, decisive YES.
Where the angels don’t fear to tread. Pair-work in pre-school?
Yes, absolutely yes! I have been introducing pairwork in my pre-school groups first intuitively, simply because I had a very big group of children and we never got to produce any language apart from choral, whole class production and that simply was annoying for me, as the teacher. My students had a lot of potential and I did not want to waste an opportunity. Not quite knowing what to do and how to do it, I started to move towards working in pairs. It worked and by the end of the second year of pre-school, my group was ready and I was able to do what I do with my teens or adults: ‘Together, together, together’ while pointing at pairs of students. By the time we got to primary, this was a natural part of our lessons and some of the children were not even seven at this point. It is possible.
Then, naturally, I decided to do it again, with a new year 1 group, but this time, in a more conscious way, in order to be able to share it with my teachers. We started the course in September, we started to shape the group and the routine and we started to introduce pair-work. I kept my eyes open, I kept our class journal and we did it. It took 13 weeks of a course, with classes that took place only once a week. I presented the results of this research at our BKC Conference in 2020. and you can read more about it in a post here.
How to do it: The choice of the activity
The choice of the activity is one of the most important elements contributing to the success of the whole process. I got a heads-up here only because I have been teaching for many years and I had a chance to bump into one of the older coursebooks for kids which, although it had a few disadvantage and which does not even come close to the level of the currently used coursebooks for children, it did include a few ingenious solutions and, among them, the one I am going to describe below.
The one that featured in every unit of the coursebook was the maze the example of which you can see below. Initially, it was a simple but effective listening game, to practise the target language, especially vocabulary. Kids would listen to a robot dictating the path through the maze, for example: START: red…blue…yellow…brown…grey…etc until one of the exits, A, B or C. The words were separated by a funny sound, something that I would describe as ‘stomping by a robot, marching’ that the kids absolutely LOVED but it also gave them a great advantage of getting enough time to prepare for the following step. In every activity there were about 6 or 7 rounds of the game.
This game can be easily turned into a speaking – listening game and, eventually, into a pairwork.
It starts with the teacher NOT using the audio and dictating the route through the maze, with the kids following it and reaching the final destination. Naturally, the following step is the teacher nominating the students to decide on the following step, one word per child. This stage can go on for as long as it is necessary for the kids to become familiar with the format.
Afterwards, either still in the same unit and with the same maze or in the following unit with the new vocabulary, kids are put into small teams and they lead each other, in teams, through the maze. Eventually, they are put into pairs and they do it with only one partner, with one student speaking and the other student listening and following from the start to the exits.
In order to make it more monitorable, for the teacher and for the students and, also, to make it more achievable, we started to trace the route with coloured pencils or markers, each round with a different colour. This way, the children could always go back in case they got lost and the children can also monitor each other, the student dictating could potentially see where their friends were going.
This way, in a relatively short period of time, the kids got used to the new format, to working together, with only a partial monitoring and support from the teacher. It definitely helped that the vocabulary range in each case was quite limited, namely, only single words, from the obligatory set of words introduced and practised before. The students were not overwhelmed and could focus only on the format of the game. At the same time, however, in the later units of level 2, there were also more complex mazes, for example one in which the kids had to listen to a brief description of an animal for example: it has got stripes, it is big, it can run (zebra). Obviously, that means that the level of challenge can be raised when the children are ready for it.
Julie Ashworth and John Clarke, I Spy 1, SB, p. 23, OUP
It is very easy to recreate the idea using only the black and white clipart visuals and a grid of the required size. Here you see a maze that I created for my preschoolers (rooms).
Below you can see one more type of an activity that features almost in every unit of the coursebook and this one is specifically designed for pairwork for the young students. It was always some kind of a guessing game, with the two spies (the theme of the book, duh:-) trying to guess what the other one is thinking about. I really liked it for the visuals specifically designed for that purpose and the target langauge beautifully displayed on the page to support the students’ production. Using these was a lot of fun and it was effective but I still think that the previous one, the maze, worked better as regards the first steps in working in pairs.
Julie Ashworth and John Clarke, I Spy 1, SB, p. 45, OUP
Contributing factors
There is a whole lot of things that a teacher can do in class in order to facilitate the whole process. They can be implemented throughout the course, little by little, bit by bit.
Seating: make sure that the kids are sitting in a way that faciliates pair-work, in some sort of separation from the other pairs, for example by pairing up the tables and chairs, putting the chairs and kids facing each other.
Resources: these need to be prepared with a lot of care and attention. Apart from the example based on the activity that features in the I Spy coursebooks, described above, the teacher can also use a set of mini-flashcards, as described in my post about pair-work for preschoolers. These cards are used in a game of simple riddles but the cards themselves are small (eight or six or four that fit on an A4 piece of paper) in order for the kids to be able to manipulate them with ease. What is more, a set comprises of an envelope, too that holds all the cards. This way, there is no danger of kids dropping the cards (or if they do, these will fall back into the envelope) and the secret, very necessary in that game, is easily kept throughout the game. Even if the cards are printed on a regular photocopying paper, they are not see-through, being in the envelope.
Roles and turn-taking: Another thing is that the teacher only needs one envelope per pair. This helps a lot with assigning the role. It is crystal clear to the kids who is speaking (the child with the envelope) and who is listening (the child without the envelope). Turn-taking is also more obvious since the kids are literally passing the baton here, the envelope or whatever is the set of materials.
Signals: Introducing the pairwork is a part of the routine and, naturally, it will take some time. To facilitate it, like with the other elements of the class routine in primary and pre-primary, it would be good to include some visual representation of the pairwork, such as gestures or chants, anything that will signal to the students what is about to be the following stage of the lesson. It can be for example a simple flashcard. I love to use a flashcard with a pair of socks for the younger kids and a two pears for the older kids who can get this pronunciation joke but a picture of two kids talking will do, too. Some more modern coursebooks have started to introduce those and that is great). Another solution can be a simple chant, for example ‘Let’s play together! Let’s play in pairs! 3…2…1’. As with all the chants, this will introduce the next stage and it will give the kids a chance to get ready or maybe even to organise themselves. The same applies to the end of the pairwork stage.
Pairing-up: In the early stages, I would recommend a teacher-led pairing up. It is perfectly natural that in a group of children, there will be some students who will be better prepared to work in pairs early and some who will need to more time, even if all the students are of the same age or level. Based on the knowledge of the group and the individual children to end up with the most efficient pairing. This might be necessary to do over a few first lessons, later starting to experiment with some variations. I like to use a set of cards with all the kids’ names and we have a pairwork (or project) draft when we need it. The cards can be taken out of a box or a bag by the teacher or by students, too.
Time: Thil will of course, depend on an activity but choosing an open-ended game, without an obvious grand-finale gives the teacher more freedom and flexibility to finish the game when it is best for the class, rather than having to go until the very end when some of the kids might already be getting tired and bore and when they can start losing their focus. It might be a good idea to set a timer on the phone or to choose a song as a timing tool. It is very necessary to tell the kids how long they will play for.
Here is a little post I wrote, about 5 easy to prepare, low-key and YL-friendly and YL teacher-friendly activities that can be prepared with almost no time investment.
One: a boardgame
Boardgames are fun and they are of a great help not only because they provide opportunities to practise vocabulary and structures but also because they help with kids learning to play in pairs or teams, to learn to take turns and to cooperate.
The most basic set includes a printed board, like the one that can be found in Heinemann Children’s Games (published in 1995, omg), featured in the photo below, a dice, a set of checkers. Apart from that, the teacher also needs a set of flashcards or mini-flashcards. The students play the game and every time they land on a box, they pick up a card from the pile and use the word in a relevant sentence (ie they say if they like the food item on the card or they ask their partner a question). Once used, the cards go to the bottom of the pile to be used again. If there are more than one team playing, it is good to use a few sets of cards ie Do you like with animals, food and toys etc. Unless, of course, the teacher has time to photocopy and to cut up the mini-cards.
Here are some useful tricks:
Instead of letting the kids roll the dice on the table, give each team a plastic cup with the dice inside and show them how they should shake it in order to get a number. This will prevent the dice from rolling off the tables and slowing the game.
Instead of checkers, you can use a set of small paper toys, colourful paperclips, colourful magnets or even simple colourful pieces of paper on which the kids can write their names. I also like to use stickers (still unpeeled, on small pieces of paper). This way, no matter who actually wins the game, everyone wins and the sticker is their reward.
Do not worry if you do not have enough time to play the game until the very end, from Start to Finish. This way of playing is only a convention. The game is still fun if the teacher sets the alarm clock for 5 minutes, for example, and then finishes the game, provided that all the players within a team have had the same number of turns. After the game is stopped, the winner is whoever is the closer to FINISH.
Heinemman Children’s Games
Two: I spy with my little eye
The only thing that is needed is a picture, some kind of an illustration, taken either from the website or from the electronic form of the coursebook. I do recommend Starters, Flyers and Movers picture wordlists which can be downloaded for free and which include amazing picture scenes for all the topics relevant to these exams and levels. To be honest with you, it is one of my professional dreams that Cambridge University Press publishes them and makes them available for purchase.
These can be printed or just displayed on the interactive whiteboard or on the computer screen. Kids play in pairs but everyone is using the same picture. The basic version of the game includes the more traditional version of the game (I spy with my little eye something big / small and something green / blue / yellow etc) but it can be transformed into any picture-based riddles or description game or Yes / No game and in that case any vocabulary and structures can be involved.
Here are some useful tricks:
There are many variations of picture-based activities. You can find lots of ideas in my previous posts from the series All you need is …a picture which you can find here and here
If you have a dice (or even better – a dice per pair or per team of students), you can also use the same illustrations in a dice description game
There are plenty of illustrations available. I do recommend Starters, Flyers and Movers picture wordlists which can be downloaded for free and which include amazing picture scenes for all the topics relevant to these exams and levels. To be honest with you, it is one of my professional dreams that Cambridge University Press publishes them and makes them available for purchase. I also like to use any of the Starters, Flyers and Movers materials, the speaking visuals, the reading visuals, listening part 1 visuals. Lots and lots is happening in these pictures and they are appropriate for the younger YL.
Don’t forget to check out the silly picture scenes used by the speech therapists. They are lovely, colourful and fun and kids really (really) like them. I wrote about them a few years ago and I am still a huge fan.
As regards the older YL, I still use the activities with different visuals: photographs from the google search engine, the higher levels exams (PET, FCE, CAE and CPE past papers, especially the speaking visuals). I also love using the materpieces of the world’s art but, admittedly, finding these might take a bit longer unless you have your set of go-to paintings.
Three: Tell me about it on Wordwall
This, thanks to all the tools available on wordwall, has become one of my go to games. It is a set of pictures (template: Open the Box), with a number of points in each box. Kids work in pairs, they choose the box and they have to say something about the visual in each box. With the higher levels of primary or the older students, the teacher assigns a number of sentences that they have to produce. With the younger students, the teacher gives clear instructions regarding the language expected. Here is one example for the year 1 kids of the pre-A1 level: toys. During the game the kids could produce the following structures: It is a teddy bear. It is brown. It is old. I don’t like it.
The game is a great one because it works with individual students and groups, big and small. Everyone plays together and everyone produces because even if there is one student responsible for choosing the number of the box, everyone can say something about the picture.
I like to play the game as one of the first competitive games with a group of young learners, only we play it teacher vs all the kids (and I do my best to lose:-)
Here are some tricks
If you don’t feel like preparing these, go to wordwall, you can find all my games in the community. I made all of them public. You can find them here or you can enter wordwall and look for my profile Azapart.
The range and the number of structures can be adapted to the age and the level of the kids. I play this game with my preschoolers and my primary students but also with my juniors and teens.
Four: Riddles
Riddles are, by far, one of my favourite games with any age, with the youngest of students and with my teenagers and adults, too. In order to make it work, we only need a set of flashcards or a set of mini-flashcards. I have already written a (great) post about it and you can find it here.
Five: A list of words
I have to admit, I love being a lazy teacher and I always award myself some extra points for all these occassions when I figure out how to be lazy and effective. One of my favourite ready-to-use resources are the word lists from our coursebooks. Sometimes, these can be a set of pictures + words (younger students), sometimes a table with all the key words, for all the older students, juniors and teens. Sometimes, these are the lists that the teacher has to create, especially if we talk about the higher level groups and about working on the vocabulary related to a text (reading or listening). All of the activities below are used to give the students a chance to use the words again and again and again, they are a part of the controlled and freer practice stages of the lesson.
Tricks or some of the ways in which I like to use these lists:
The list is used as the basis for riddles (see above).
Questions: students work in pairs, to ask each other questions about the chosen items. Depending on the vocabulary set, these questions can range from very simple (‘Do you like…?’), in a variety of tenses, especially if they are verbs (‘How often do you..?’, ‘Did you…?’, ‘Have you ever…?’, ‘Are you planning to…?’)
Pairs: students work in pairs and look for ways of pairing up the words and phrases, based on: similar meaning, same first letter, same part of speech, some logical connection, to name a few.
Ordering: students organise the words according to one or more criteria i.e. the important and the less important words, the easy and the difficult, the familiar and the unfamiliar etc or, simply, organising them in the order of importance or preference to the student and then comparing their new lists with other students and justifying their choices.
Similar or different: students choose a pair of words or phrases for their partner to decide if these two are similar or different and to explain why. This is, by far, my favourite one, especially for the older and for the higher level students.
The beautiful tiles shown to us by engineer-history.ru
We are approaching a new academic year, new groups, new kids, new beginnings. What a happy coincidence that it is right now that I found this particular report and got to reminisce about this particular lesson that I observed many (many) years ago. Here is my start-of-the-new-academic-year post!
A quote from the report
‘It was a pleasure to watch you with that class and you have no idea what difference it makes to have a teacher who actually feels at ease in a PW class and who wants to be there. The kids can sense it and respond to it. There were many great activities and clear evidence of routine and good classroom management. Well done!’
And it was a memorable lesson for a number of reasons…
The were two teachers working at one of the branches of my school. One of them got in touch asking for help. One of her groups was a group of pre-schoolers and it wasn’t going very well. She went through the initial orientation and lesson planning with a senior teacher but, somehow, as it sometimes happens, it was not coming together. She requested to be taken off the group. It was an option that was being considered but, we wanted to see first if there was anything to be done and I went to observe the group.
Admittedly, it was not the easiest group. It was quite big, by our standards, filled up to the maximum (we had 8 as the maximum number), the kids were beginners but as it sometimes happens in language schools there were of different ages, there was a four-year-old and two six-year-olds and one of the children was also dealing with some attention disorder (according to what I could observe in one lesson).
It was not the best lesson. The teacher was trying, doing her best but, at heart, she must have already decided that this is not something that she wants to do and it was obvious, to the observer and, apparently, to the kids, too.
Two weeks and three lessons later, this group had a different teacher…
And that’s because we were lucky. During one of our training sessions, I literally bumped into the teacher and, in the hallway, in-between the training sessions, snacks and coffee, she asked me if I know of any ‘homeless’ group of pre-schoolers because she said, she would really really start teaching one. She had never done that.
And although I try to avoid doing it, this one time, I found myself observing the teacher in her first lesson with a group. I was sitting at the back of the classroom, with a piece of paper, taking notes and I could not believe my own eyes. Literally.
There must have been some magic done, some spells cast or, during these few days between the two lessons and the two teachers, these kids were tranformed into focused, well-behaved, engaged pre-schoolers! There were a different group of kids.
Everyone came, the older and the younger and the suspected ADHD, a full house! The teacher got some information about the group and the course from the previous teacher, she had some time to prepare. The teacher did her best to follow the routine of the pre-school groups that we had at the school and to manage the class. Nonetheless, it was her first lesson ever, with this group and with this age group.
Great teachers are made, not born and it was not her best lesson and it could not have been. She was just starting with the group, she was still at the stage of memorising the kids’ names and faces and yet, it was a good lesson. Not so much because of the appropriate tasks, instructions, staging and materials but because the teacher wanted to be in the classroom and, somehow, the kids knew it and they appreciated that and, as a result, they responded well to whatever it was that she brought with her. Everything else, the great results, the pleasure and the Above Standard lessons came later.
Why it is good news for all the teachers starting with a new group / level / age group / coursebook
Great teachers are made, not born. Even if the beginnings are complicated, stressful and scary, things are going to get better and they are going to get better thanks to the number of minutes, hours, weeks, months and years clocked in in front of a group of students. These number of minutes has its beginnings in the very first lesson.
You as a teacher, you can really (really) make a difference by planning the lesson and by preparing for who and what you might encounter in the lesson. By choosing the appropriate activities, by considering the things that can go wrong, by writing the lesson plan for your primary or pre-primary students, with a lot of variety, by reading about the first primary lesson survival kit and about the first pre-primary lesson survival kit, or about all the things that I wish I had known before my first lesson in pre-primary.
You, as a teacher, you can really (really!) make a difference by preparing yourself mentally for the first lessons and by believing in yourself! The one piece of advice that I always give my teachers about to step into the pre-school or primary classrooms is this: SMILE! That is because a smile can get us far and further! It is not so much about maintaining your muscles pulled into a shape of a croissant but about remaining cheerful. Things might not go to plan in this first lesson but it is absolutely necessary to remember that they will get better in lesson 2, 3, 4 and 5. As it is necessary to remember that we are great teachers and we love what we do. And that we do our best. When we do our best, of course, although, I personally think that most of the teacher try to do their best, on daily basis.
We are all a little bit stressed and feeling uneasy before the first lessons, all of us. Even those who are experienced teachers and trainers. Sorry! It is true the levels of confidence go up and the levels of stress go down with time but it is never completely relaxed. The only difference now is that at this point I am aware of the fact that things might not be perfect but I will know how to handle it. It is not ‘Oh, no! What if…’ and more like ‘Oh, ok, bring it on.’
Power to you, dear teacher!
What other advice would you give to a teacher who is about to start teaching Young Learners? Leave a comment in the comments box!
A text written for the lower levels learners, pre-A – A1 level, preferably accompanied by some visuals. The one pictured above which was the inspiration for this kind of an activity was taken from Super Grammar 2 by Emma Szlachta, CUP, p. 38
A set of blue cards to cover some of the key words in the coursebook. It is much easier to manage if the text is displayed on the screen. The SECRET cards can be easily adjusted and moved around during the lesson.
Procedures
In the first stage, the kids look at the illustrations and describe them. If you are looking for the ideas how to use with illustrations in the EFL classroom, make sure you check out these posts, here and here. There are lots and lots of ideas. This stage will give the kids an opportunity to produce some language and also to get ready for the reading.
Kids read the text in silence, individually and, afterwards, in pairs, trying to guess what words are hidden under the cards. At this point all ideas are good ideas but the teacher should point out that there are some hints in the illustrations.
The class read out loud together, led by the teacher or the students, and each pair proposes their ideas. The teacher is revealing the real words. It is not a competitive activity so no points are awarded.
The following stage is the reading comprehension task, such as the one in the coursebook.
The follow-up productive task can be a text interpretation: the teacher covers all the secret words again. Kids work in pairs, they read a text (one text per child). In step A: they try to remember what the original words are, in step B: the kids read the text again with their own ideas for all the secret words.
Why we liked it
The activity is easy to prepare, especially with the use of the electronic devices.
The activity can be used with practically any text and it is easy to adjust the level of development by limiting or extending the number of words, by focusing on some specific words ie only colours, only verbs or only a specific grammar word ie a structure or a part of speech, depending on the level of the students.
This is one of the ways of breaking up the text and making it more manageable for the early readers.
It is also a way of making it more interesting as it changes the reading task into something resembling a guessing game.
It can be made productive and generative by the illustrations-based activities or by the creative reading (the final stage) which can also lead to a writing task ie describing your own room or your own dream room.
Here is a situation that I witnessed many times during an observed lesson with young learners: a teacher and a group of kids start playing a game, for example riddles. The teacher models, then the kids take over. One student sits in front of everyone, chooses a card for the other students to guess or to identify. Kids start shouting out words, one of them gets it and the teacher takes the flashcard and hands it over to the student who shouted the correct word. The game goes on and it takes about three rounds more for one of the students to get offended / upset / angry / sad about not winning. More often or not, someone starts crying. Oups.
It is not only about losing, although, to be honest, this is a serious problem, too. Here, however, the ‘failure‘ of some kids is clearly visualised with a flashcard. Frequently, it is also very unfair because it is the faster and louder kids that get the point and these are not necessarily the kids who really know the answer. Also, there is another dilemma in a situation when two students shout out the correct answer at exactly the same point. Will the teacher tear the card into halves? No, of course not. Sigh.
That issue, frequent as it was, was always addressed during the feedback session and I am pretty sure every session on games for VYL and YL included the commandment compressed down to ‘Don’t use flashcards as reward points’. This was the bread and butter of a trainer / VYL ados.
My real shock to the system was an invitation to volunteer at Sheredar, our rehabilitation camp for children who went through serious diseases a few years back. I had a chance to go there a few times and teaching kids was an amazing experience. However, before I went, our contact and coordinator, Ksenia, said: ‘They will be one big mixed ability group but you can choose any topic you want. Actually, do whatever, just don’t play any competitive games. These kids have fought enough’. It took me about a minute to understand that I have no games to play. All my favourite activities, those that I frequently used in my lessons, with kids, juniors and teens, all of those favourite ones were competitive. ALL OF THEM.
Should kids even be playing competitive games?
I have been looking for sources on competition in the EFL classroom and I have found…nothing. I started to look around for any texts on kids and competition and it turns out that getting engaged in competitive activities such as sports, for example, can be very beneficial for children.
competitive activities can be motivating and encourage kids to improve their skills
playing and losing and winning helps children to learn how to deal with competition and with the fear of losing
they are also an opportunity to learn how to deal with pressure and how to win and how to lose
they are good for building self-confidence
they teach kids about the existence of the rules that need to be obeyed
they can help form friendships and relationships, with peers and adults
and, also, even if they are sports, they can lead to improving academic performance in children
Although, of course, they can also have some drawbacks, such as too much pressure, negative feelings in children and for their self-esteem.
On the whole, competition is a good thing, although it is not a given that all the children take to it naturally. Some of them might struggle, which is natural, bearing in mind that not all the adults have learnt to deal with it successfully, and they should be given help and support.
EFL and competition
As regards our EFL classes, especially those with the younger learners, primary and pre-primary, it would be just reasonable not to abandon all the competitive games althogether but to keep an eye on the balance and on avoiding a situation when all the games and activities that comprise a lesson have promote competition. Apart from competition, there are the other beautiful C-words such as: cooperation, colaboration, cognitive skills development that can and should be the foundations for our classroom life.
Not to mention that everything that we do in our lessons, namely learning a language, is against the very idea of competition. All the kids learn for themselves and although they have the same linguistic aims, their overall results or results in certain areas of language learning do not depend on the results of the other participants. What is more, their progress is measured against their previous results and achievement, although, admittedly, the situation is slightly different when it comes to learning a langauge in the context of a state school where kids’ progress is graded at every step of the way.
Things to consider
The most important thing to remember seems to be the fact that we, as teachers, should not take things for granted and assume that all the kids in our group like competition and competitive activities and that all of them are equally prepared to win and lose with grace.
The other factor to take into consideration is the age of the students. The younger the students, the less likely it is that they have already had a chance to participate in those kind of activities and acquire these skills and that they have enough life experience to be mature about it. It is a combination of their age, cognitive and social development as well as life circumstances such as having a chance to attend kindergarten, playing at home with parents and relatives, having older siblings and so on.
Equally important is the bond between the students. A group of children starting to learn together in September is a completely from the same group in January or even in October, especially in the context of after school groups or afternoon language schools where children might land in a group of complete strangers with whom the only thing they have in common is the age and the level of English, not the family ties, the address or the school. The more they get to know each other, the more they bond, the easier it will be for the teacher to set up activities, including competitive games, and for the kids to handle ‘failure‘. After all, it is easier to lose and get over it when you play with friends.
What it comes down to in real life, with real children, is keeping an eye on the kids, checking how they react to different stimuli and then introducing some competitive games, carefully, step by step. However, with my youngest students, this non-competitive period may span over the entire length of the pre-school EFL. With the most recent group, we started to play only half-way through our third year together and even then it was the whole group vs the teacher (who always lost).
Every little helps
Here are some of the tricks and techniques that a teacher can use in the classroom while introducing competitive games or taming of the competitive games we often include in our lessons (tired and tested):
Playing the familiar games such as riddles or pelmanism in a less competitive way. First of all, we do not award points for the boardrush OR we award points to both teams for competing the task, not only to the team who is faster (especially that with boardrush at least it is sometimes very tricky to establish who really was the first one to touch the board). Points here can be pluses or hearts on the board or flashcards given out to the winner in a particular round. Instead, we finish the round, the praise everyone and we simply move on. The game itself (the fun of participating, the language produced or used) is the reward itself.
We do not determine the order of participation based on the successful participation, for example in riddles, when the student who guesses the word is the next one to play. Instead, all students take turns, one by one to make a riddle for the whole class, regardless of how good they are at guessing.
Playing ‘Simon Says’ without excluding the losers by asking them to sit down after they make a mistake, especially that a growing number of non-participating students is very bad for the overall classroom and behaviour management. Or, in the same way, playing the Treasure Hunt without establishing who the winner is. We all look for clues around the classroom or the school, we all participate for ten minutes and in the end all check our answers, without counting the points or the number of the elements or stages completed.
With pelmanism, instead of playing 1-1, with kids uncovering two cards at a time, the whole group can do it in pairs, with two kids always participating, ideally in different combinations. As soon as a pair is found, the teacher and the kids cheer for everyone, and the cards are put aside or given back to the teacher.
Play the game in the format of the teacher vs the whole group, to create the support for the individual child. If they win or if they lose, they will do it together, with all their friends, nobody will be singled out. Ideally, in such a situation, the teacher loses and has a chance to model the mature behaviour and how ‘a failure’ can be handled, but, of course, bending the rules in order to ensure that might not always be easy to do. If you are looking for ideas, I would recommend pelmanism. It is very easy to get distracted and to forget (or ‘to forget’) where the other card from the pair is located.
Any game can be played in teams, a team vs a team, instead of individuals competing with each other. This way, again, the support, the safety net or the safety blanket is created. Enjoying the victory or handing the loss is easier with your team. Even if there is one child who does not handle ‘the failure’ very well, there will be other children in this situation, too. They will serve as role models.
Having the teacher participate, as one of the teams, can also help soften the blow of the defeat. Again, the teacher will be the one to model the langauge use, the game rules application and the player’s behaviour, too.
If possible, talk to the parents whose children struggle with controlling their emotions while losing the game. If nothing else, it would be great to find out whether there have been any factors that could have played a part, whether the child reacts this way in other situations and to simply inform them what happened in class. Perhaps parents will be willing to discuss this topic at home, to reinforce what the teacher does at school and, perhaps, to also play games at home, to help the child tame that beast.
In one of the posts (see bibliography), I found another great tip. What is necessary is a quick game that can be played a few times, in a quick succession, in the same lesson. Some of these will be won, some will be lost, but the quick pace and the repetition will make either of the results, the victory or the defeat, not so relevant anymore and easier to deal with and to even forget.
Another approach that I have been using in some of my summer camp groups was the Points Poster that we used throughout the entire camp. It was very simple, only an A3 piece of paper, with the team’s name, displayed on the wall. Every time we played a competitive game, there were points, for example two or three stickers for the winners, a star for everyone else. All the kids took very well to it because winning the stickers was great but the joy lasted a brief moment only and very quickly the stickers won today would quickly get lost among all the other stickers won on all the other days. The defeat, on the other hand, was perhaps not the most pleasant thing in the world but it didn’t matter much because the students knew that they would be another game on the same or on the following day. What is more, because I was using some leftover stickers, of all kinds, sometimes it was more fun to choose one huge sticker for your team rather then three little ones…
Finishing each game with the teacher and the kids thanking each other for the game, with a simple handshake and ‘Good game‘, just like all the football or volleyball players do at the end of the match.
Any activity that can work towards bonding and building a community is also welcome
If there is the students who struggle with dealing with their own emotions while playing games, I have so far tried two things. One of them was pairing this student up with myself, in 1-1 games, in order to be better able to model, to monitor and to help the child control their emotions during the game. I have also experimented with pairing up with this child in the games that we played in teams because, again, losing (or winning) in one team with the teacher was easier to deal with.
Non-competitive EFL games
First, an anecdote. The heading of this paragraph is what I put into my google. Would you like to guess what the amazing Uncle Google came up with? Nothing.
‘Fun games’ – yes, ‘no prep games’ – yes, ‘exciting games’ – yes, sure. There was one post from the British Council (see bibliography) but not many of them are appropriate for kids and not many are actual games. And one article about an activity that still has winners and losers…Nada, nada, nada.
Here are some suggestions from the non-competitive games that I have played
Musical flashcards: a simple movement game, an adaptation of the musical chairs game, only without any kids dropping out. The teacher puts out all the relevant flashcards on the floor, kids move around with some music playing. When it stops, every child picks up a card and makes a sentence for example: I like bananas (topic: food), I haven’t got a cat (topic: food), I am wearing a blue t-shirt (topic: clothes) etc. Afterwards, the flashcards go back onto the floor, the teacher puts the music on for another round of the game.
All the logical games such as Find the difference (for example those that we have in the YLE Movers and Flyers) or Odd one out (for example YLE Movers) that can be easily adapted to any topic. A similar activity will be also based on the silly picture scenes that I described in an earlier post here.
I Spy: a variation of the game with a set of visuals such as a poster or an illustration from the coursebook. Kids work together as a group (in the early stages) or in pairs, they describe something in the picture, with the relevant sentences, depending on the age and level (I spy with my little eye something. It is big, it is green. It is next to the cat. etc). The student or the students who listen find the relevant object. This game is not competitive because there are no winners / losers and the game goes on until the child / children guess. As the game proceeds, the kids can offer more information and support to help their partner, for example the first letter / sound, the gestures etc.
Riddles: the same principle and procedure as above but it can be played with flashcards or a set of word cards or a set of words prepared by the kids.
Back to the board: it is a very popular game that can easily be played in a non-competitive way and this way it can go help build and develop a sense of community and give the whole group a chance to work together. One of the students sits on a chair in the centre, facing the group. The teacher writes a word or a simple sentence on the board and signals how many words it includes. The group work together to help the one student guess and recreate the word on the board. With the lower level kids, flashcards can be used instead of words although using simple sentences works wonders for the students to learn and to work better with the grammar, the sentence structure and, progressively, with the meta language.
Monster game aka Hangman aka Let’s save the little human: I love playing Monster Game with the lower levels because it helps the students work with literacy, spelling and blending and we always play it as a whole group with all the students contributing and working together to guess the letters and the words and to help the little human who is slowly losing parts of the ladder, the boat or the hotair balloon. To make the game less cruel, the element of getting points can be added (i.e. when the kids guess a part of the word or when they guess the most common letter or when they get all the vowels etc) and with my summer camp group the game finished with the kids drawing some food for the hungry monster because they developed empathy for someone hungry, even though it was a monster.
Telephone: this game is a variation of something known as ‘Whispers’, with the whole group sitting together and passing a word or a simple phrase, from the end to the beginning of the chain. This is not a very generative game or a very communicative one but it helps the kids work together towards one goal and it is easy enough even for the youngest kids.
Stations in the classroom: this is not really an activity but a format of completing tasks with kids. The teacher sets up a few stations in the classrom, for example in the four corners of the room. Kids move from one station to the other and complete the task such as unscrambling words, completing a simple handout, matching words and pictures, playing a round of pelmanims and many more. Kids complete a few tasks during the lesson and their job is done when they complete a full circle but they do not compete with everyone else in the group. It is up to the teacher to decide when then task is done and they can move on and in this way, even the ‘weaker’ students can play and participate without any pressure from the group.
Community building games: on of the 30 Creative Team Building Activities. I haven’t tried these yet but these definitely caught my eye: Cross the Line (22), Paper Chain Race (30), Shrinking Classroom (18), Building a tower (6 and 10). Or 22 Fun Team Building Games and Activities for Kids. Here I really liked: Forehead Dots (4), Some of them have the ‘choose the best / fastest team’ element which works to some extent as it helps the kids to bond within their team but I would still skip this element altogether.
Last but not least, among the things that has been on my wishlist of the things to try out in the classroom is the parachute and all the parachute games. Some ideas can be found here.
Coda
But, perhaps, the situation is a little bit better than it seems. While working on this post, I asked my audience on the social media about their opinion and I was very happy to find that those who responded use a mix of competitive and non-competitive games. At the same time, the teachers admitted that they have to deal with the competition-related stress in the EFL classroom, although not all the time and ‘some games, some days, some kids’ was the most popular answer.
What about you, dear reader? Do you play any non-competitive games with your YL students?
I would like to know a tiny little bit more about my readers. There are so many of you, popping in here, again and again, and the numbers of visitors and visits are going up and make my heart sweel with joy. But I realised I don’t know anything about my readers and I would love to know, a tiny little bit more.
This is the second chapter of the post devoted to lesson planning habits worth developing in a teacher of a YL teacher. Here you can find the first part of it: Variety and it is all about looking back at a lesson already planned to check that includes the necessary variety of interaction patterns, materials, settlers and stirrers and learning styles.
One more item that needs to be added to the list of Things To Think About while planning for young learners are all the potential problems and solutions. It is an indispensable element of the formal written plan for any kids’ lesson (or at least it should be). It is also a habit that a teacher needs to develop for the every teaching when no plans are written.
Here is why:
Looking at the lesson from the perspective of all the potential disasters and (‘disasters’) to happen can help troubleshoot
Problems and solutions can and should be applied to the instructions, interaction patterns, materials, activities, learning styles, behaviour, participation, time, seating arrangements and the amount of language produced.
Coming up with the list of everything that can go wrong helps to generate at least some of the solutions for them and get the teacher better prepared for the lesson and, ultimately, fewer surprises in the classroom.
This is especially important if the teacher is doing the activity for the first time ever or if it is a new approach or technique never used with a particular group of students.
Analysing the problems and solutions can result in the teacher having to adapt the original lesson arrangements, in order to improve the lesson.
Predicting what can go pear-shaped and then comparing it with a list of the things that worked out or that didn’t is another fascinating exercise that a teacher can do as part of the post-lesson reflection. How many of my predictions were true? How many of them were not? Was I overly optimistic or overly pessimistic? What were the biggest surprises?
Writing these down is an option but, most likely, in there everyday teaching life, with 20+ lessons to teach a week, there won’t be any time for that. It is a lot more important to allocate time for that, though, and, although it might take a bit longer in the beginning, it is definitely one of the teaching skills that become automatic and, with time, require less and less time committment. Speaking from experience here:-) Over the years, it turns you into a teacher who takes literally a second to look at a handout or a game or a coursebook page and who can see a list of its benefits and pitfalls. Upon which a decision can be made whether to use it in class or not.
