The first primary lesson survival kit

Context: it is a new place, a new group of kids. In lieu of an induction, one line only and it goes: ‘You will be in room 5, miss Anka. Don’t forget to fill in the electronic register after the lesson.’

Lesson aims

It is all very simple: this particular lesson happens to give the kids a chance to meet the teacher and to give the teacher an opportunity to see the kids in their natural habitat. Since there will be quite a few new things for the children to deal with such as the class, the teacher, the first lesson in a foreign language, the coursebook, the classroom, the songs, games and the content, it might be best to keep the expectations on a reasonable level. It is a lot more important to focus on the child, on the student and on the routine, rather than on some ambitious linguistic aims. After all, there is going to be a whole year for the latter.

Before the lesson

In a perfect world, it would be possible for the teacher to see the classroom before the lesson, to take stock of the environment and all it can offer and to plan building the routine around the actual classroom. Is there any area without too many pieces of furniture which can be used for the movement games or for the start or the ending of the lesson? Is it possible to move the furniture to create a circle or are the desks to heavy for that and you will have to sit in rows as they do in their regular classes?

In a perfect world, it would also be possible to get the register of all the kids to figure out how many we are to expect and, last but not least, to talk to their class teacher to get to know them a bit before the lesson or, in a super-perfect-ideal-over-the-rainbow world to find out what they did in the previous academic year (if we are talking about year II and year III kids).

Alas. More often than not this is not going to be possible so I will base this lesson on the worst-case scenario: there is no chance to see the classroom, there is nobody who knows anything about the kids or the English they might or might not have had.

This is the worst-case scenario but it is not the end of the world, surely.

The overall structure of all these lessons will be the same but I will include some ideas for the year 1 and year 2/3 kids which might have had some English.

Entering the room

If the lesson takes place in a new classroom which you are entering together, line the kids up in front of the room. If they are entering with you or if they are already in the room, come in, say hello and do the roll call. It will help you remember their names and associate them with the place where they are sitting. It might be a good idea to write them all up on the board, in the order in which the kids are sitting. However, if there are more than eight or ten, this will take forever and will be counterproductive.

The official start of the lesson

It is great if this part of the lesson is marked in a special way.

You can:

• ask the kids to close their eyes (please demo), count from 10 to 1 (or from 5 to 1) and say ‘Open your eyes’ and say and wave Hello to everyone.
• ask the kids to stand up and do a bit of gymnastics (stand up, shake your arms, clap your hands, march (on the spot), dance, touch your hand, tummy, back, shake your friends’ hand, say hello), with the teacher demonstrating and participating, too.
• clap once and ask the kids to clap once, clap twice and ask the kids to clap twice, clap three times and ask the kids to clap three time, say: Hello, kids say: Hello.
• Whisper: Hello, have the kids repeat, then have them repeat: Hello Anka. Repeat a few times and then officially reply: hello everyone. Repeat with all the kids in the room:
• Hello Piotrek (point at Piotrek) Hello everyone (says Piotrek)

Even if you don’t know or can’t remember the kids’ names, the students will help you. These types of activities are great because they mark the start of the real lesson and of communicating in English, they involve everyone in an easy way (clapping, touching, saying Hello) and there are a bit out of the ordinary hence fun.

Hello song

I would say it is a definite must, even in the very first lesson. First and foremost, it is something that the whole class can participate in, even if they don’t speak too much English because there will be gestures, rhythm and music involved. Second of all, it is great to start building the routine from the very first lesson and a routine or the lesson framework for primary school children must involve a song.

If possible, take your students to a safe corner (at the back or in the front of the room), go there yourself and call your students, one by one, to join you. Use their names. As soon as they get there, use one of the punctuation marks to signal the start of a new activity. It can be clapping, counting from 10 to 1 or just asking the kids (‘Are you ready?’ ‘Yes, we are’). This will help the kids navigate around the lesson and to get ready and to focus for whatever is to come next and it is especially useful in the beginng of the course. As the course progresses, it can be used less and less frequently because the kids develop the habit of tuning in.

Show the gestures for the song and go through a few dry runs, with you modelling and the kids repeating, in the correct order and in a random order. One of my greatest hits is Hello Song from Super Simple Songs. It is fast and cheerful and it includes 6 different, easy to mime emotions (if you need ideas for the gestures, have a look at the song video). There is an easier song, also by Super Simple Songs, Hello Hello, Can you clap your hands? This one includes some few verbs that will get the kids moving (clap, stomp, turn around).

After the presentation and the mini-rehersal, we listen to the song and try to take part as much as possible. It doesn’t matter if all your kids are not one amazingly coordinated choir. After all, it is the first time they hear the song. Things will get better in lesson 2, 3 and 15.

Both songs are accompanied by videos, of course, but I tend to skip those in the first few lessons, focusing instead on audio only, not to overload the kids as there are too many things in the first lesson anyway. Afterwards, we clap to thank each other and we sit down. Again, the teacher calls our students, one by one (or in twos in really big groups) to invite them to sit. This might take some time if the group is really big but it is the time well-invested (building the routine!) and it helps to avoid the chaos and the noise. As soon as the kids get back to their seats, use your punctuation mark again.

If there is no space that can be used as the dancefloor, these can be done while sitting or standing by the table, although then I would use the first song, the emotions can be easily demonstrated with everyone sitting at their tables.

New material: Class I

These kids will be brand new, straight out of the box, with no English whatsoever, although, of course, you might get a few that attended some classes in pre-school. For that reason, revision as the next stage of the lesson will not really work as there is nothing to revise.

In such a case there are a few options to go for

1. start introducing the colours because, more likely than not, this is going to be the first topic / unit in the coursebook. Another advantage is that even without any specific realia the kids will have plenty of colours on them and there will be plenty in the classroom and these can be used in a variety of games. There is no need to prepare any special flashcards either and a set of markers, coloured pencils, blocks or even pieces of coloured paper can be used instead.
2. rather than colours, go for pets of jungle animals for the first lesson. It will be necessary to prepare the cards here (or any kind of visuals) but the obvious advantage is the fact that animals are likeable, fun and at least some of the names will be familiar to kids and/or recognisable (cat, giraffe, zebra, lion) and the animals create lots of opportunities for a variety of resources: animals produce sounds (and can be used in a guessing game), animals move in a certain way (and can be mimed), animals have specific shapes and colours (and can be recognized in game ‘through the keyhole’).
3. Another good topic for the first lesson is school objects. The objects themselves are not as cute and fun as the jungle animals but these are definitely the things that we are going to be using in every lesson and that makes them worth investing in. Not to mention that they are already in the classroom and that each student will have a set and they can be used in a simple call out activity ‘show me your pencil’ etc. They can be also used for miming (with a bit of imagination) and for some guessing games, too. Most of them are small enough to be put in a Magic Bag and used for guessing. And through the keyhole can be used, too, with realia or with flashcards.

Regardless of which topic is chosen, one of more of the following activities can be used:

• Introduction and drilling using a variety of voices (saying it with emotions, different volumes of pitch, pace etc)
• Creating simple chants by organizing the cards on the floor / board and saying them in a rhythmical way ie

‘Yellow, yellow, blue. Yellow, yellow, blue. Red and green, red and green. Yellow, yellow, blue.’

‘Pencil, book and ruler. Pencil, book and ruler. School, pen, schoolbag, pen. Pencil, book and ruler.’

• The cards can be put up around the room and with the teacher (or the kids) calling out single words, the group have to listen and to point at the tiger, zebra, lion and monkey.
• Riddles: the simplest version of it is the teacher miming the words for the kids to guess or playing the audio for the kids to guess or drawing a part of the picture on the board for the kids to guess.
• What’s my secret word? Kids, chorally in the first lesson, guess which word the teacher is holding. After a few rounds the kids can take over.
• In the same way, a simple memory game can be played, too, either with the realia (ie markers or books of different colours) or with the flashcards displayed on the board or on the floor. Kids close their eyes, the teacher removes or covers one of the items, kids open their eyes and guess. It might happen that at least some of them will be answering in their L1 at this point and it is ok. Please praise them and provide the word in the target language.
• Bearing in mind that this will be the kids’ first language lesson ever, five new words seems like a very good number for the first lesson.

New material: Class II and III

Essentially, all the activities mentioned above can be simply used with the older kids, too. Any of the topics will be a revision for kids and if the youngest of them can deal with that, so can the older ones. It might also be an interesting activity for the teacher to evaluate the abilities and skills of the kids against each other as, most likely, the year III kids will be able to participate more freely and in a bigger number of games mentioned above and with a bigger number of key words.

If the teacher is more adventurous it would be a good idea to involve the kids in an activity that will help them show off as regards the vocabulary (or structures) they have learnt so far and those that they remember. This can be done in the form of the alphabet game.

There are practically no resources necessary, apart from the alphabet, as a poster and small cards any picture scene, either a paper poster or one of the beautiful illustrations in the YLE Starters Picture Wordlist which can be displayed on the electronic whiteboard or printed and displayed on the noticeboard.

The teacher demonstrates by choosing one of the letters of the alphabet and calls out all the words in the picture begining with that letter. The kids join in, too.

The game can be played in teams, with the class divided into smaller groups, with each team working on one of the letters. It would be good to avoid scoring the kids as some of the letters are more friendly or generative and it would simply be unfair. It is also not necessary to introduce a lot of competition in the very first lesson. The teams can be awarded a point for completing the task, regardless of how many words they produce or remember. It might be also a good idea to remove all the unfriendly and rare letters from the set (ie x, v, w, y).

One more advantage of this game, especially for the first lesson, is that it can be played for as many rounds as there is time for. It can be stopped at any time.

Music and movement

Depending on the classroom, this stage of the lesson can be done in the back of the room or at the desks. Again, the kids are called out, and they join the teacher, one by one. Again, the punctuation mark is used to mark the start of a new stage.

It can take a form of a gym break (see above) or it can be another song. One of my favourites for the first lessons is ‘Head and shoulders’ or ‘Open Shut Them’, both for the same reason: they involve lots and lots of movement and are easy to mime and all the kids can be involved in taking part. As in the case of the first song, gestures go first, then the music and the song itself, also without any video.

Table time

Ideally, this element would be included in the lesson, too. In my primary groups I like to give them a chance to produce something, with class I or II to check whether they can write their names and in case of class I – how well they hold the pencil.

At the same time, it has to be something simple and perhaps the simple handprints aka autumn leaves might be a good choice here. This kind of an activity will only involve minimal resources (paper, pencils, crayons or coloured pencils), it does not take a long time and it can be made more or less complex ie only the handprint, the stem and the veins or the leaf, the veins and the colouring, the name written by the teacher, for class I students or the kids decorating their leaves in the way they choose and writing their own name. The leaves in class I can simply be displayed on the noticeboard at the end of the lesson, the older kids from class II and III can also be encouraged to describe their leaves and to compare (ie Sasha: My leaf is green) with the other kids raising hands if theirs are, too. The older kids’ leaves end up on the noticeboard (or the door or the wall), too.

There is one great activity perfect for this age and level that we used to on every first day of the summer camp: a folder, homemade and highly personalised. In class, the kids would get an A3 piece of paper and they would decorate it following teacher’s instructions (first write your name in big letters, draw your favourite fruit, draw your favourite drink, draw your favourite sport etc). After the lesson, the teacher would add another piece of A3 and staple each of these into an envelope. We used to keep those in class, on the shelf or on the window-sill and everything we produced during the sessions would be nicely collected in these folders at the end of each day. This activity takes a bit more time and might not be appropriate for all the context but it can also be used in its basic form: a personalised name poster.

At the end of the stage, the kids help up with cleaning up by putting away their pencils, crayons and handing the posters to the teacher. The teacher uses the punctuation mark again.

Goodbye

Since the kids will be still at their tables, it might be best to say goodbye just there. The teacher says ‘Thank you everyone’ and to all the kids individually. If the group is very big, it might be a good idea to do it super fast and in twos (Thank you, Masha and Sasha) but it is a nice touch and going over all the kids’ names, once more, really helps to remember them better)

I personally like to include a goodbye song also with primary, at least in the beginning of a new course to help create a framework for the lesson, for example Bye, bye, goodbye or See you later, alligator but later on, with the limited lesson time, we replace it the final game.

As regards homework, it might be a good idea to skip it during the first lesson. This element of the everyday routine can also be added later.

Instead of a coda

• The list of the activities and the format of the lesson will depend on its length. If the lesson lasts 60 minutes, the teacher can use two, three or even four flashcards games and extend the leaf making. If the lesson is only 40 minutes’ long, it is better to focus on fewer activities, without rushing the kids. It might be a good idea to skip ‘the paper’ altogether, with no coursebook but also with no handouts or crafts, focusing on building the routine and interacting with kids in the target language. In that case, the leaf or the poster activity would be done in the lesson 2 of the course.
• The same applies to stories, videos or online games. They are great resources and can be introduced later on in the course. The first lesson will be made of many new things anyway and it is better not to overload the children and to save some surprises for later.
• As for the rules and the rewards’ charts, these are of course very important with a group of primary school kids but this also can wait until a bit later than the very first lesson. The lesson plan might be introduced from the lesson 2 as well.
• There is one more element of the first class with primary that has not been included here but only because it is a very important one, it deserves its own post and this element are the parents. Regardless of whether we like it or not, the parents of our younger students will be in the classroom with us and it would be necessary to acknowledge their presence. A face-to-face meeting would be ideal but a note or a message in the electronic register or in the Whatsapp group will do to get you started. The parents might be coming from different background and have a different previous English learning experience, as students or as parents. That is why it is absolutely necessary to let them know how you are going to work with your students and their kids. More of that soon!

Here you can find some tried and tested activities for primary school kids (although perhaps not necessarily all of them for the very first lesson!)

If you are also about to start teaching your pre-primary, you will find some ideas here.

Here you can find my first VYL lesson survival kit and a post about what I wished I had known before my first VYL lesson.

And here the series of the unexpected in the classroom aka landing on Mars, with the pre-school group.

Here you have a set of great posts from Sandy Millin devoted to all three age groups and everything that you might want to know before you start.

Happy teaching!