Food around the World - Breakfast!

Yesterday we were reviewing breakfast vocabulary and the children drew pictures of what they have for breakfast. I then took photos of their drawings and uploaded them to Fotobabble. I then recorded them saying what they had for breakfast.

Here is the result:



 This is part of the Food around the World project I wrote about here. If you would like to participate in the project, ask for access to the wiki, saying who you are and how old your learners are.

Thanks :)

Food around the World Introduction

I  have a new project for young learners that I hope will take off and continue throughout the year.
At the moment with my two classes of 6 to 7 year olds, we are looking at the topic Healthy Eating and we are learning lots of new vocabulary for food and drink, as well as learning about food groups and health.

Food around the World is an international project I have set up on a wiki, to share information with children in other parts of  the world. The idea is for teachers who are covering a similar topic with their class to add information to the wiki, so we can find out about different cultures and what they eat.

There are many ways in which this could be done, but those I suggest are:

a) Record a video of the children talking about food
b) Take photos of the children's drawings of food and add comments to the wiki

Other alternatives are to use digital storytelling tools to present the information.
I have split the wiki into different sections to incorporate different mini-themes. These are:

1) Breakfast around the world
2) Lunch around the world
3) Dinner around the world
4) My favourite food
5) Food I like/don't like
6) Food in my country
7) Food in my region
8) Healthy Eating

I plan to add photos of drawings my learners have made about what they eat and videos of them talking about it. For example, in the first theme I am going to ask them to draw a picture of their breakfast (or they could take a photo at home and send it by email) and to tell me what they have for breakfast. I will upload the resulting videos to the wiki.

There may be too many different tasks but the idea is that everyone can find something they can add to.

The project is aimed at primary learners, but some of the topics may be suitable for older students too.

The project appears on Skype in the Classroom and the link to the wiki is here.
The wiki is private and so anybody who would like to join in will have to ask for approval. This is for safety reasons.

If it time restrictions allow us to have a live Skype chat between classes, that is also a possibility.

If you are interested in taking part in this long-term project with your young learners, add a comment here, ask to join the wiki or add your name to the Skype project page.

5 Goals for 2013

Reading iTDi's post by Barb Sakamoto on Facebook this morning has encouraged me to come up with a set of my own professional goals for 2013. Last week I wrote about getting students to make their own list of learning goals for the term along with how they planned to achieve them. Now it's my turn...

1) Blog more - I think 2010 was my most prolific blogging year and I have certainly let myself down by barely blogging in 2012. Despite promises to keep up this blog, I have not done so, and what is the point of having a blog if you don't write? I would like to write a post every week, although I will only write if I have something to say. After all, no-one really wants to read my ramblings!

2) Write a couple of articles - Again 2010 was my article year. I wrote two fairly major articles, one for HLT online magazine and the other for MET. Blogging is one thing, but I think sitting down and planning an article, and then writing helps develop useful skills that otherwise are lost. I have not written an academic essay for several years and articles, like essays, require a good deal of planning and organization of ideas. It is also a great way of practising written English - I may be a native speaker, but having fluency in writing is something that I think most of us need to work on!

3) Improve my public speaking skills - I will be giving a workshop at TESOL Spain in March and hope to improve on previous workshops I have given. I gave a workshop on the same topic towards the end of last year, but I would like to greatly improve the presentation of my ideas and the flow of the talk. In previous workshops I have either a) used index cards with the main points and key words that I wanted to use, almost memorising the words from a written text I had prepared or b) got a bit lost with my index cards and done the rest of the talk ad lib. I would like to create a kind of mixture of the two - sounding natural and as if I know what I'm talking about, without having to refer so much to written cues. I am not sure I am going to be able to achieve this objective, as I get very nervous before a workshop, and lack confidence in my subject matter.

4) Complete all modules that are published on ELT Teacher 2 Writer.  I am very interested in materials writing, especially for Young Learners. I have already written and self-published a book for teachers of young learners, however, I would like to receive some training as I feel I need some guidance in this area.

5) Send in proposals for online workshops/webinars. This is something new for me, and quite nerve-racking for someone who gets nervous at face-to-face sessions. A webinar is generally attended by many more people than a conference workshop. It is also a very different experience as there are lots of other factors involved. I had a taste of webinars in last year's EVO Digital Storytelling course, but I tried to avoid speaking where possible! This year hopefully, I will be able to lead the webinar more comfortably, along with Juan Uribe, who I am sure has more experience in this! I am often sent links to online mini-conferences and calls for participation for things like VRT. This year I plan to send in a proposal and overcome my fear of speaking in webinars.

These are my five main objectives for the year 2013. Some of them I feel comfortable about (writing), others not so (public speaking) but I think it is important to challenge oneself and leave the comfort zone now and again.

What are your goals for 2013?

I promise that I will do my best...

Like most people, I like to start in New Year in a positive way, by making one or two lifestyle changes or at least trying to approach things with more enthusiasm and a more positive attitude. After the Christmas break, I need my students to throw themselves back into language learning with all the energy they can muster, especially if they are going to be sitting an external exam in the next few months. So I decided to encourage my adult learners to make New Year's English Resolutions.

These resolutions consist of a set of objectives that they will aim to reach over the following term, and how they plan to achieve these objectives.

We started the lesson talking about New Year's Resolutions generally - have they made any? What are they? Have they made a resolution before? Did they stick to it? Why(not)?

I shared my own ideas about why people often fail to maintain their resolutions, which are
1) lack of planning (I think you need to say what you are going to do and when)
2) lack of intrinsic motivation (people make resolutions in January because it is traditional, and often don't even expect to keep their promises)

and advice on how to keep your resolutions:
1) Make a plan or timetable to keep a record of what you want to do and keep it somewhere visible.
2) Tell as many people as possible, share it on all your social networks (peer pressure can work!)

I then told the students that we were going to come up with English Resolutions. They had to come up with a list of objectives, both general and specific, about what they expected to achieve over the next two months. As an example of the difference between general and specific objectives, I gave the following example:

I want to improve my vocabulary  - general

I want to learn at least 5 new words every day - specific

They also had to suggest how they could achieve those objectives - what would they do in order to learn 5 new words every day?

The students then shared their objectives with the rest of the class and we drew up a list of common goals, on which we would spend valuable class time. The more individual objectives would remain the responsibility of each student to work on in their free time.

At the end of the lesson, we had a list of areas on which most of the class wanted to work on, which I will integrate into our syllabus for the term, and each student had a list of things they plan to do each week at home. Some of them seem slightly over-ambitious ("I am going to watch at least one film in English a week, read a book in English, make my own vocabulary lists, do at least one writing task and study my grammar book") but I plan to regularly ask students how they are getting on and allow them to modify their objectives if they are not realistically possible.

Finally, I pledged to mark written work within a week, correct all homework exercises in class when they are due, and to add new vocabulary to our Memrise list every week.

 

GRETA Annual Course

I would like to thank GRETA teaching association for inviting me to speak at their recent 3-day conference in Granada. The theme of the conference was "Tips of the trade for challenges ahead in ELT and bilingualism" with sections on using technology and a focus on practical classroom ideas. I decided to give a session on Collaborative Digital Stories, as it seemed the perfect opportunity to share some of the ideas from last year's EVO session Digital Storytelling for Young Learners which I co-moderated along with Shelly Terrell, Dave Dodgson, Ozge Karaoglu, Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto, Jennifer Verschoor and Esra Girgin.

In the workshop I introduced participants to several freely available online tools that are especially suitable for using with young learners. We also discussed some of the benefits for children of working together, and other ways in which the tools could be used. Finally, participants received some ideas on how to contact other teachers for wider collaborative projects, including joining the EVO session in 2013.

Apart from a slight technical hitch at the beginning (there is always one!) and starting late, the workshop seemed to go well and I think most people took away something useful to use in their classrooms.

For those that are interested in learning more, I will be giving a similar talk in Seville at the ACEIA conference on 17th November. I would also strongly recommend joing our 2013 EVO session "Digital Storytelling with Young Learners" where you will be able to try out lots of different tools and meet (virtually) hundreds (hopefully!) of other teachers from around the world. Registration will begin in January here.

Thank you to all those that attended GRETA on Saturday. I hope to see you all again next year!

Using Photos as Prompts for Discussion

Yesterday I came across the following slideshow of photos by Samuel Aranda in the New York Times. The photos are black and white shots of scenes occurring around Spain that highlight the desperation some are living due to the financial crisis that began in 2008. Some of the photos may seem shocking, especially to those that have lived in Spain during the long boom period, being more reminiscent of a country in political conflict or of say 50 years ago. This gave me the idea of using these photos in class, with teens and adults but without providing the context behind them. I plan to show some of the photos (2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14), asking the following questions:

Who are these people?
Where are they? (In which country/city?)
When was the photo taken?
What is happening?
Why do you think this is happening? What are the reasons behind it?

I will encourage them to give reasons for their answers, describing what they see.

I am fairly sure that none of my students will recognise these photos as being taken recently in Spain.

I will then give students the information provided underneath each photo on slips of paper, which they have to match with the photos. Hopefully this will generate some discussion.

As I will be using this activity with B2-C1 levels, I may ask students to write:

a) A discursive composition on the problems Spain currently faces
b) A report outlining the main problems Spain faces and possible solutions (a hard one, seeing as the government aren't able to provide any!)
c) A story based on one of the photographs
d) A diary entry of one of the people in the photographs
e) An account of the eviction in photo 1 from the point of view of one of the children

I know that this is a complex topic and one that teenagers will find difficult, but we all know people who have lost their jobs or aren't being paid, we all see it daily on the news so I think that everyone will have something to say.

Five Six Seven - Ideas for Young Learners aged 5 to 7 (ish!)

As most of us are just starting back at school for the new academic year, I'd like to take the opportunity to write a little about a book I wrote last year. Those who follow this blog may remember me setting up a website devoted to the project a year ago, where I started to upload some of the material. The website is still available, but now there is just a sample including several complete lessons. This is because I have now self-published Five Six Seven and it is available for a very low price at Lulu.

Since I set up the website, I was contacted by a few teachers looking to try out the materials with their classes. I have not received much feedback so I have emailed those teachers with a short questionnaire.

Here is a modified FAQ of Five Six Seven:

What is Five Six Seven?

Five Six Seven is a content-based language course for young learners of approximately five to seven years of age.

Who is it aimed at?

Five Six Seven is aimed at teachers of English to young learners. It is meant as an alternative to traditional language lessons. It can be used as a course or as a resource book to dip into.

Is Five Six Seven suitable for subject teachers?

No. The course includes content from other areas of the curriculum but does not replace those subjects. It is an English course that uses content from other subjects to motivate and maintain interest whilst encouraging the learners to communicate in a natural way. It may, however, be useful for CLIL teachers who are looking for extra ideas.

What is included in the Five Six Seven course?

Five Six Seven is a teacher's guide. There is no class book. The guide is made up of a series of 6 step by step lesson plans for each of the 9 units, plus 4 insertable units. At the back of the guide you will find photocopiable worksheets and handouts to accompany the lesson plans, and a bank of pictures that you can download from the Microsoft Office website.  


How can I download Five Six Seven to try it out with my class?

Five Six Seven has its own website. On the site you will find a full copy of the syllabus ready to download. You will also be able to view sample material from the course. The book is currently available for just 79p from Lulu.com


Do I have to pay to use Five Six Seven?

Five Six Seven is available for a nominal fee. This is to cover the commission that Lulu takes from each copy to pay for hosting and listing costs. However, you can share the contents with your colleagues and other teachers in your school without charge. I ask that you provide some feedback as to the use, quality and practicality of the materials. If there is anything that you think could be improved, please drop me a line!

Visit http://www.wix.com/michelleworgan/fivesixseven for more information or buy a copy from Lulu.com.

Scotland the Brave - Part 2

This post is the second in a series based on  the Visit Scotland website. In Part 1 I focused on a section of the website that showcases different aspects of the beautiful landscapes of Scotland. Most of the activities I mentioned are suitable for teenagers and adults of various levels. I would recommend this other website for younger learners.

You can find Part 1 here.

Book of Beasts

• Ask students to tell each other what they know about the Loch Ness Monster. What does it look like? Where does it live? How big is it? What does it eat? Alternatively, give a description of the monster to students, either orally or written, and ask them to draw a picture. 

• Project or print out a copy of all eight creatures (you can do this with the PRINT SCREEN button and clipping with Paint). Give students a creature each/per pair/per group and ask them to imagine what it is like. They can give it an appropriate name, home, lifestyle. This could later be the basis for a story and can be used in some of the writing activities I mentioned in Part 1.

• Alternatively, print out or project the descriptions of the creatures and ask students to draw what they think they look like.

•  Write a list of adjectives on the board suitable for monsters/mythological creatures. Ask students to choose the best adjective(s) for each creature. Generate discussion by asking students if they agree or differ. Comparative sentences could be a good language focus as students can compare the creatures.

• After looking at the different creatures, students invent their own. With younger learners, ask them to draw it a provide some basic information. Otherwise, ask them to write a description as well as draw. (I would suggest not making adults draw if they don't want to!).

• For homework/or if you have a computer room, ask students to research one of the creatures. They can look for pictures, stories that mention them, newspaper articles about "sightings", maps showing their home etc. They could use Glogster to make an virtual poster.

Scotland the Brave - Part 1

Watching TV the other day I saw an advert from the Scottish Tourist Board, encouraging people to visit Scotland, home of Merida &co in the Disney Pixar film Brave . I haven't seen the film, but as Visit Scotland were offering free prize trips, I decided to enter the draw and came across this wonderful website.   

As I was browsing, quite a few lesson activities came to me - I was feeling inspired!
I have never visited Scotland and so I tend not to talk about Scottish culture or geography in the classroom, preferring to stick to what I know. However, the film Brave will surely bring about some interest in the country for learners young and old, and I would like to take advantage of this, learning something myself along the way.


When you enter the library you choose from the following aspects:
Landscape, Map, Book of Beasts, and Writers. Over the next few posts I will share my ideas for each section of the website.

Lesson Ideas - Landscape:

•  (Int+) Read the introduction to students, and ask them to draw what they imagine. Your voice is important here. Pre-teach any necessary vocabulary (soaring, rugged etc). One idea is to write things that these adjectives can describe and ask students to match nouns and adjectives.  

• (All levels) Play the video of Lochs and Glens with the screen covered. Students listen to the music and say how it makes them feel, what images they can see in their mind. Then show the video, pausing and asking students to describe the images. This is good practice for the PET speaking exam Part 3.

• (Pre-int+) Use the images in Lochs and Glens to create the setting for a story. Ask students to imagine what kind of things could happen in such a place. Discuss when the story could be set, what characters there could be, what could happen. Ask students to write a detailed description of the scenery as an opening paragraph.

• (Int+) Play the video Majestic Mountains. Tell students to imagine they are film directors and they are going to make a film in the mountains of Scotland. This could be done as a group project. Students have to decide what kind of film they are going to make and the basic plot. They can write specific scenes for each image. This video is reminiscent of scenes from films such as The Lord of the Rings, or series like Game of Thrones. Another option is to get students to take a scene from a film they know and adapt it to this setting.

• (All levels) Play the video Ancient Forests. Ask students to imagine what kind of creatures live there. These can be real, mythological or imaginary.

• (Pre-Int+) Create a guided visualisation using the images in Ancient Forests. After showing an image, students close their eyes while you guide them through the forest, asking questions to provoke the senses (sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste). Students then discuss what they imagined in pairs or groups.

• (Beginner-Int) Play the video Rolling Hills. Tell students to imagine they are going on a day trip to this place. What activities would they do? Some useful vocabulary may be: have a picnic, birdwatching, picking flowers, climbing trees, hiking, paddling, collecting leaves.

• (Elem+) If you have several computers, assign a different video to each group and ask them to give a presentation/write a description of it for the Scottish Tourist Board. They should try to make it as attractive as possible. Another option is to give each group a page to write in a brochure about Scottish landscapes.

The Three Phases of Life Abroad

I imagine that a many readers of this blog live in a country other than that in which they were brought up and I suspect that a fair few have been living there for many years. Of course, everybody has different experiences and different expectations, but I believe that there are at least two or three stages of adaptation that most of us go through after settling in another country and culture.

Reading "The House on Paradise Street" by Sofka Zinovieff, I came across the following passages, which kindled feelings of recognition of my own adaptation of living abroad. I do not live in Greece and obviously this is the character's/writer's experience and interpretation, but the general idea of the stages are similar to those I have passed through over the last 12 years.

I was pleased to shed my own surname and become “Mond Perifanis” as a reflection of my new, Greek life, but perhaps I should have worried a bit more about becoming part of this particular family. For some time I believed that my move to Greece was a way of creating a simple, pared-down persona – a clever trick, as though leaving behind my old existence physically would therefore slice through the roots that tied me to place, family, and above all, memory. At that stage – the phase I later recognised as my “Hellenic Idyll” – I abandoned myself to the worn but nonetheless charming cliché of the cool northerner being bathed in the warm water of Mediterranean delights. Perhaps it is no more of a cliché than falling in love; both are limited in duration and may be followed by pain or disappointment, but while they last are as real as anything that alters a person’s perceptions. 

In later years, after the idyll faded, I began to see the experience as a fantasy. I compared my delusion to those lovers of the ancient Greek world who believe the smooth columns and elegant sculptures were always pure white with uncontaminated simplicity. They forget, or don’t know, that most of those creations were originally painted with gaudy colours, the sculptures dressed in fashionable robes, their eyes flashy and provocative, the columns bright with circus zigzags and seaside stripes. I might have left behind the location of my past, but it was hubris to believe that a new life with Nikitas would be characterised by clean-cut minimalism. Gradually, I began to experience the alienation of being an outsider. “Where are you from?” became the defining question of each new encounter, where I tried to resist being stereotyped with my nation’s characteristics. In the beginning I felt like a character in a novel, recreated each time I revealed my country of birth, but unhampered by my personal history: when nobody knew you as a child, or disliked your parents, or approved of your school, you are potentially something new. But increasingly, I sensed I was being defined by my first answer – put into a box from which I was not then allowed to emerge. Also, although my command of Greek was constantly improving, I became frustrated by my limitations, at not understanding all the jokes and references to personalities, events or films that everyone else had grown up with. I saw the missing parts as my deficiencies. 

The third stage, after Idyll and Disillusion is Pragmatism. Ultimately, my status as an outsider became another form of liberation – to hell with other people’s preconceptions. I thought of England without disdain, even indulging in occasional bouts of nostalgia for rolling green fields, London’s cultural life, tea in a pot and other miscellaneous delights. But I was clear that I was wedded to Greece. And it is in this phase that I have tried to remain.

[...]

What had previously been exotic became annoying, starting with the details of daily life. What sort of country expects people to put their shitty toilet paper in baskets instead of down the drains? Why couldn’t they install normal drain pipes like everywhere else? Why is it considered normal to have power cuts for hours on end during summer heat-waves and winter storms, as though we were living in Gaza and not twenty-first century Europe? Why are seatbelts seen as an infringement of liberty (even for children), when they know that the roads are the most dangerous in Europe? Why is the Greeks’ idea of freedom interpreted as the freedom to park across the pavement, blocking women with pushchairs and pensioners, or the freedom to smoke incessantly, everywhere? Of course, once I started down this slippery slope, the questions came faster and more furiously. Why was it considered normal when we handed the surgeon a “small envelope” containing 3,000 euros cash when Nikitas had a minor operation in a state hospital? There are times, especially after a roasting hot night in summer, when even a cotton sheet seems to burn the skin and the whine of dive-bombing mosquitoes drives you mad, that I long for the soothing North, the subtle shadows of grey London light and cool summer nights where you sleep with a duvet. “Moaning Maud” – that is what I am, or at least what I became. Even worse than “Bored Maud”, as an old boyfriend used to say. At least I wasn’t “Maudlin” or “Mordant”, as Desmond, my grandfather, called me affectionately. He would make up limericks that made use of all the words that rhymed with my name. There was a young lady called Maud, who was always incredibly bored… I remember flawed and ignored, but there was also roared, gnawed, clawed. Above all, the thing I had tired of was the Greeks’ obsession with themselves, with the nature of Greekness, with how they are viewed and how unfairly they are judged. Beware of saying even the slightest critical thing about Greece to a Greek as they will take it as though you have said their mother is a whore and their father her pimp.

I have always found it easy to adapt (maybe too easy?) to the place I am staying in, to the point where I would not want people to know I was a foreigner. Even when I am a tourist, I hate getting a map out in public! This happened very early on, possibly because my Spanish was better than that of most of my friends who were just beginning to learn the language. I have never enjoyed being the centre of attention and therefore didn't want people to stare or see me as different. Luckily, I have an "ear" for languages and my accent isn't very noticeable, enabling me to blend in. In turn, this "becoming Spanish" phase gradually became a "I hate Britain" phase, where I would start to deny my "Britishness" and abandon almost any contact with my country's culture. In those pre-internet days (at least for me) this was very easy, in fact it was very difficult to keep up with news, current affairs, TV, music etc from abroad. So I became "less British/more Spanish" quickly during this period, although I would hate it when people started telling jokes! Even on the few visits I made to the UK to see my family, they would say I had a Spanish accent - due to an unusual intonation that I had picked up, as I only really used English in my classes and socialised with locals. But I would never be Spanish and yet I was no longer really British. I didn't fit into any box, although the Spanish would put me in the box labelled "British" and the British in the box labelled "Spanish".

This period probably lasted around five years, although with the acquisition of a computer and internet connection, it may have been diluted somewhat. As a big fan of indie music, I spent many hours during my late twenties online, reading about British bands and downloading records. This led to a new interest in British TV, especially comedy, and my asking for BBC comedies for Christmas presents. I then rekindled my interest in English football, especially during the season my team were promoted to the Premier League. I was now reading the Guardian as well as NME. I went to Gibraltar to buy British back bacon, Cheshire cheese and gravy granules.

Little by little, I started to get my Britishness back, after having denied it for several years. With this, like Maud in the story, came the questioning and criticism of some local ways of life. I have never been one to complain much about the place where I am living - this is why I think I am good at adapting, I don't feel the need to compare it with somewhere else. And when I hear other Brits moaning about all things Spanish I have to resist the urge to tell them that nobody is forcing them to live here. If they don't like it, they can lump it. Either that or join forces with discontent citizens who are actually trying to change things. However, after having lived almost all of my adult life to date in Spain, I feel that I should have some right to complain about things, being born in a country shouldn't give one an automatic right to whinge more than others!

Sport is one of the few things that divides me from everyone else here, but that is actually a good thing, it gives us something to talk about. I will always support England in football, however bad they are and however much they disappoint me. I absolutely loved the London Olympics! It gave me a sense of pride that the England football team has never done - now I know how everyone felt here when Spain won the World Cup.

I don't really have a concluding paragraph to this post. I only realised that there was a kind of pattern to the period of adaptation when I recognised certain opinions in friends or colleagues. They too have gone through the "British denial" phase and after reading The House on Paradise Street, I discovered that this must be more common than I had thought. I would love to know if any of my readers have gone through similar periods during their years living out of their country of birth (note, I don't want to say "home country", as I am of the opinion that home is where you make it). Please add your thoughts and experiences in the Comments section.

Thanks for reading!

Return of the Mack... I mean blog

 I can hardly believe that the last time I wrote a post was in December. Last year! I knew I hadn't got round to writing anything for a few months but I honestly didn't think I had left it so long. I know flying time is a cliché but that's what seems to have happened in 2012. I suppose I had become slightly disillusioned with the whole ELT world, mainly because of problems in the workplace, and shied away from any contact with it, preferring to spend my free time as far away as possible.

Because that is what I did - I stopped writing on my blog, I stopped reading other people's blogs, allowing my Google reader to get clogged up with hundreds of posts I would never read. I stopped going on Twitter.
You may call it a 6 month holiday from my PLN...

I'm wondering whether it is just all down to my wanting to "get away from it all".

I started blogging in 2009, I joined Twitter at around the same time. Although it took me some time to get into both, eventually I was spending hours every morning reading blogs, writing posts and reading tweets, not to mention the weekly hour of furiously tweeting that is ELTchat (by the way, I am very sorry to hear about the demise of the ELTchat website, although I'm sure you'll have it back up and running soon with another domain). During 2010 and 2011 I probably spent the equivalent hours to that of a part time job on Google Reader, Blogger and Twitter. Just as well I didn't use Facebook for professional development! Other people didn't understand - why are you spending so much time doing something that you are not getting paid for?

And in the end, I got a bit tired of it all. I would take a week "off" and then have 50 blogposts to read when I went back online. So I would ignore them and the following week there would be 86, and then 132 etc etc
It got to the point where I just stopped using Feedly/Igoogle and ignored them forever.

But let me get back to my point in question. I am one of those people who takes up a new hobby, at first spends hours and hours on it only for it to peter out after a few months. I may take it back up again at a later date, but for shorter periods and with less motivation. This is especially true for sport (I did swimming for about a year, then running from which I have to have 2 months off every summer due to the heat!) but has even happened this with knitting - I spent hours and hours knitting this winter, even taking it on the train with me to a professional development session, but who fancies knitting in the summer? All that sweaty wool...

So, is this what has happened to me with blogging and tweeting? Are all the above just excuses?
Now I've had so much time off, I feel it is time to get back into it. To reconnect with all those people I had regular "conversations" with on Twitter. To comment on blogposts written by my PLN. To write on my own blog. However, this time I am not going to spend hours every day as I just don't think it is healthy. I will try to post something once a week, or more if I get inspired. I will spend maximum one hour a day reading blogs and retweeting things I have discovered. I will try and take part in ELTchat in the lunchtime session.

Does that sound like a good plan to you?

Note - Anyone remember Mark Morrison? I hated this song but always ended up singing it!

Conducting a Survey with 7-year-olds

As part of our current topic Healthy Eating, the children carried out a survey to find out what foods other students in the school eat and how often. At first I asked the children if they knew what a survey was in Spanish (encuesta) but they weren't sure what one was, so I explained that it consisted of asking people questions to find out information. We were going to ask questions about food to see if the students in our school were healthy eaters or not.

As the children had not come across a survey or questionnaire before, I gave them some sample questions and the class decided that they would be good questions to ask. I divided the children into groups of three and asked them to come up with five questions about different foods e.g.

                Do you eat fish?     Do you drink milk?     Do you eat vegetables?

We then drilled these questions with a chant:

Do you eat fish?
Yes, I eat fish!
Do you drink milk?
Yes, I drink milk!
Do you eat peas?
No, no I don't!

The children really enjoyed the chant, and we did several versions with different food items and with different dynamics such as teacher vs whole class, girls vs boys etc.

By this point they were all able to ask "do you" questions with no problems. I gave them a worksheet in groups with a table. In the first column they had to choose the different foods they wanted to ask questions about. The second column was to record YES or NO and the third column was to write down how many times a week.

In the following lesson, we practised asking questions to find out how many times a week people ate different foods, and the possible answers (one, two, three times, every day). I didn't want to complicate things to much so I avoided teaching ONCE, TWICE. We were then ready to go and ask the questions.
We went to another class and each group went to ask different people. Because the other class were teenagers, I allowed the groups to stay together to ask their questions. The children said they enjoyed asking questions to the other class and asked to do it again! So I said they could go to another class in the following lesson. This time the groups split up and asked questions individually.

The next stage was to compile the results. The members of each group got together and added up all the YES answers to form a total number of people that eat each food. When they had done this, I showed them an empty bar chart and started to complete it with examples that the children gave me. When they were clear about how to make a bar chart using their figures, each group started work.

In the final lesson, the groups finished their charts and then presented their results to the class, saying:

    Eleven people eat sweets. Nine people eat carrots. Twelve people eat chicken.

Each group compared their results with those of the group that was presenting, telling the class of any differences.

The children really enjoyed this project and I think it was because they were really using English to communicate with other people. Conducting a questionnaire and compiling the results is a challenging task for this age group but they seemed to relish in the fact that they were doing something new, that they had never even done in Spanish. They all managed to ask people questions with only a little prompting, and they were all able to work in groups to produce the end results. All in all, a successful project!

A Story Project with Six-year-olds

I am a big fan of trying out tasks traditionally left to older students with my youngest learners. Writing stories is one of these activities. I suppose "writing" isn't the right word here as these children are just learning to read and write in Spanish, and have only been learning English for two months with very little exposure to the written word. Perhaps "creating" stories would be a better way of putting it. In any case, my class of six-year-olds have worked together to create a story from scratch, make the pages and then tell the story using Voicethread for the world to see. This is how we did it:

Day One

1) First I told the children that we were going to create our own story as a class. "¿¿En inglés??" (In English???) they all cried! Yes, in English. The first thing was to choose a character as the protagonist. I introduced the concept of voting and we ended up with the spider as our main character.

2) Having ascertained that a story usually contains a problem that must be solved we then started to think of problems the spider might have. The winner (actually my suggestion, but it could have been a student's) was that the spider was sad because her friends were playing without her.

3) I then stuck a series of pieces of A4 paper on the board to create a storyboard. I did this so that afterwards each learner would get a page from which to base their picture. We decided on the events and their order and I drew a quick sketch to remind us of what happened in each scene.

4) I then showed the children the materials we were going to be using - tissue paper, glue and felt-tip pens. I showed them that by layering different coloured pieces of tissue paper, we got different colours and textures. The glue would have a similar effect and the felt-tip pens had a roller stamp which would give us more visible texture. The idea was to create a story similar to Eric Carle's illustrations, as we had looked at The Very Hungry Caterpillar in previous lessons.

Days Two and Three

1) I put the storyboard back on display and I told the story again, pointing to each page. Some new vocabulary came up in the story such as park, play tag, friends, lonely as well as negative sentences (didn't, isn't). If that isn't emergent language, I don't know what is! When all the children were clear about the events of the story and could provide most of the important words, I asked each child to choose a scene. They would be responsible for creating that page of the book.

2) I asked the children what colours they would like to use for the spider. They decided that blue and yellow would be nice with green for the legs. We did the same for the other characters. I cut out some basic shapes from the tissue paper and the children started to stick them onto their pages. The sticking took a while as I had to go round helping them squeeze the glue as you needed very strong fingers! As I went round, I would ask the children what insect the were making. Some children had more sticking to do, others had a spider's web to draw. In the end, we drew the faces and used the pens to draw legs, antennae and patterns.

3) It was then time to find out if the children remembered the story. I ask them to stand in a line with their pages in order. There were no problems here so we then added page numbers. I told the story again, with their help, using their pictures.

4)I took photos of the pictures and later uploaded them to Voicethread.

Day Four

1) I showed the children the basic Voicethread (just picures, no comments) on the computer. They were all thrilled to see their pictures on the internet! I asked them what was missing. I asked them if somebody saw our story, would they know what happened? They decided that it would be difficult to know what happened because there were no words. So I told them that they were going to add the words, but not written words. They were going to tell the story with their voices. "¿¿¿En inglés???" they all cried!

2) I went through the story, page by page, asking the children what happened. I elicited the important words in English and the provided the full sentence. Each child would repeat their sentence several times. We did quite a bit of rehearsing, including using "big voices" that the microphone would pick up.

3) By this stage, the children could say their sentences and they knew what they were saying, so it was time to record. Each child came up to the computer and said their sentence. Some needed a few tries to get it right (including the volume). We listened to each child and then we listened to the whole story. I had to fill in for a couple of absent learners. Our story was now complete!

4) The final task was to collate the pages and create the actual storybook which I would hang in the classroom for everone to look at.

Here is the final product:

Storybooks from the 70s and 80s

Yesterday, browsing on Amazon, I came across the exact same edition of a book I had in around 1980. The book in question was There was an old lady who swallowed a fly by Pam Adams, first published in 1973. Of course, I promptly bought it for the modest price of 3.78 euros! But childhood nostalgia apart, I bought the book to use in the classroom. I loved the story as a young child, partly because the fact that an old lady swallows a horse is hilarious to a four-year-old, but also because the story has fantastic rhythm and rhyme.

There was an old lady who swallowed a bird. How absurd she swallowed a bird! She swallowed the bird to catch the spider that wriggled a wriggled and tickled inside her.

The story also contains a lot of repetition, (think along the lines of The Twelve Days of Christmas) always ending each verse with "perhaps she'll die". My mother, who used to read me the story, is tone deaf, but even she got the rhythm right!

Finding this book, however, got me thinking about other storybooks I loved as a child and whether they are still in print. Here is a list of books I read frequently in the early to mid 80s:

1. Paddington at the Seaside by Michael Bond
2. The Topsy and Tim series by Jean Adamson and Belinda Worsley (an eighties Charlie and Lola?)
3. My Naughty Little Sister by Dorothy Edwards (I had one!)
4. Mog's Christmas by Judith Kerr
5. The Secret Seven by Enid Blighton
6. The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton
7. Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown
8. The Cat in the Hat by Dr Seuss
9. The Naughtiest Girl in the School by Enid Blyton

These are the ones I can remember, but I'm sure there were many more. I loved anything by Enid Blyton including the Mallory Towers series (boarding schools sounded so exciting!). Most of these books were first published in the 60s and 70s ( the Blighton books in the 40s!) but most are still available in new prints or second-hand on Amazon. It just goes to show that a good book will never disappear.

The next few posts will be dedicated to children's storybooks, old and new, and how we can use them in the classroom.

ACEIA: CHALLENGING CHILDREN - Content in the Primary EFL Classroom

I would like to thank all those that came to my session yesterday and I hope that you took something useful away with you ready to use in your classrooms. I apologise for rushing through some of the practical activities at the end - I would have sincerely preferred to spend more time discussing stories, crafts and games, but as often happens, time got the better of me! If you do have any questions or if there is anything you would like to discuss, you can do so here in the comments section.

In any case, here is the slideshow if you would like to take another look:

ACEIA Challenging Children: Content in the Primary EFL Classroom




If you would like to know the titles of the books I showed you, let me know and I will post them here.

I hope everyone enjoyed the day, I know I did!

Personalised Dictogloss to Practise Tenses

One way of diagnosing students' knowledge of tenses, or of getting them to focus on the difference between two tenses, is by doing a dictogloss. On Tuesday with my CAE class, we were revising the use of different tenses, and I began by reading out the following short text:

Last Sunday I took part in the Race for Life. 

This was the first time I had ever participated in a race, except for the odd fun run when I was at school.

I took up running in March and I have been training since then - two or three times a week. 

There were over 5,000 women doing the run, of all ages. It wasn't easy to run at first because some of the women were walking.

In the end I finished in 412th position! I'm now thinking of trying to increase the distance on my training runs. Maybe next year I'll do a 10K!

 

I read it twice. The students then had to write down what they remembered from the text. They then worked in pairs to try to reconstruct the text, paying close attention to the verb tenses used. They could ask me questions about any details they couldn't remember, but I would reply with one word answers. I then wrote all the verbs that appeared in the story on the board and the students could check that they had included everything. There didn't seem to be any problems with the use of tenses in this case, but you can always focus on some of the verbs and ask the students why they used each particular tense.

Today I have a teenage group who were looking at the main differences between the present simple and continuous last lesson. I am going to do a dictogloss with the following text:

I'm feeling nervous and excited. It's very noisy because there are so many people. I am with more than five thousand other people and we are all standing in a small space, like a outdoor corridor. I hear a man through the speakers. He is telling us how long we have before we start. The atmosphere is amazing. Everybody is getting ready to go. The man is reading some names and now five thousand people are singing "Happy Birthday" to those people! The man is now counting ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, go! Now there are lots of pink balloons in the air and we are all running. 

 

I will pre-teach some of the vocabulary so that the weaker students don't panic when I start to read. The first time they listen will be to find out where the speaker is. This is not explicit - they will have to imagine they are in this situation and guess where they are. Can you guess? The first example should help you!

The second time they can take notes. They will then work in pairs or threes to reconstruct the text. Again, I will write the verbs in their infinitive form on the board. If they find it difficult, I will put the verbs in the correct order. They will have to think carefully about whether each verb should be in present simple or continuous and why.

I am then going to ask them to write their own short text. They should imagine they are somewhere interesting (at a Cup Final, lost in a forest, in the A&E ward etc) and write how they are feeling and what they can see, hear etc. Hopefully, this will get them using both tenses appropriately.

Both texts are true and about an event I took part in last weekend. I think that giving a personalised touch to the materials you use can provoke more interest and discussion - the students may wish to know more, and it is more motivating for students to find out something about their teacher as a person instead of an impersonal text from a book. It may even motivate them to write their own!

Children's Book Week

Last week was Children's Book Week in the UK and I thought it would be nice to have a lesson where we talked about our favourite books. My first stop looking for suggestions on how to focus the lesson was the British Council's Teaching English website because I have previously found great ideas on using literature and poetry there. I wasn't disappointed, finding this great set of lesson ideas by Jo Bertrand.

I didn't know the book "Charlie Cook's Favourite Book" (which you can see here, Jackanory style) but it seemed a great way to introduce different types of books and the topic of "My Favourite Book".
I thought the story video would be too difficult for my class, so instead I followed Jo's advice and concentrated on some of the images from the story. I introduced some key vocabulary and we talked about whether we liked different genres of books or not.

As I don't have a copy of the book, I made this presentation so we could guess what each book on Charlie's shelf was about.

Charlie Cook's Favourite Book

It was then time to think about our own favourite books. One of the girls had brought in a book she was reading (I had asked them to but the others had forgotten!) and I asked her what is was about. I then wrote a simple text on the board with hints to remind the learners what information they would have to include.

My favourite book is ........................ by ........................................
It's about a .................. (who?) who ........................................ (what?) in ........................... (where?)
It's very exciting/interesting/funny/mysterious etc

We completed it with an example and then the learners wote down the text and thought about their favourite book. They are to post their work on our class blog.

Blogging with Kids

By KristinaB

This year I decided to set up a blog for my class of eight to ten year olds. Now I think a bit of background information is required here. Firstly, we do not have interactive whiteboards or projectors in the classroom. However, I have a laptop and wifi access. This has proved to be sufficient to show the learners how to access the blog and to answer any questions with a quick demonstration. In this class there are ten learners but I think even with larger groups you could show them how to use the blog a few at a time and allow them to practise in small groups while the others are working on something else. My main point here is that you don't need lots of equipment to set up a class blog. The main requirement is that the learners have computer and internet access at home.

I wasn't sure how willing the kids would be at first. This is the group I wrote about last month who were having some problems with their attitude towards each other and in particular to one boy. They are in the third and fourth year ar primary school and come to English lessons twice a week after school. For this reason they are not used to having to do homework for me - they have enough of that from school. When I introduced the blog, I didn't use the word "homework" but focused on how they would be able to write what they wanted, from time to time having specific tasks to do. This is in fact not true, at least not yet - I have given them a task to do every week, but until they get used to blogging I think this is a good idea. One of the girls already posted an entry about what she was doing that weekend and I think some of the others will follow suit when they have got used to the platform and how it works.

You can imagine how surprised I was when the very day I gave the homework some kids had already posted their answers! I set up the blog on 21st September and showed it to the class, and I wrote an introductory post which they dictated to me. The following week I set a task - write about your favourite outfit. On that weekend every single student wrote an entry and what is more, they started to comment on each others' posts! Some started by saying hello on our introductory post and then commenting on other people's work. One of the reasons for this is our "Kindness and Respect Box" into which a marble is placed every time somebody does or says something nice to a classmate and the children decided that the blog was a good place for this.

Some of the comments they have made are:
"So good description"
"Wow, your outfit is very beauty!"
"A very good description!"
"Excellent work, goodbye"

There are now 28 entries (so far I have set three tasks, the last one just yesterday) and over 50 comments, some of which are mine. I use the comments to recast some of the learners' errors. However, these kids are not used to writing in English and their work is full of strange spellings and a lack of grammar. I plan to go over some of the more common errors in class, but I'm not too worried about this because they are still young and one of the objectives of setting up the blog was to motivate them to use English outside the classroom.

All in all I am really pleased with the results - the kids are very enthusiastic and love writing and reading each others' comments about their work. The platform we are using is called Kidblog and is designed specifically for primary aged children. You set up a page for your class and then each member of the blog has their own individual page. It is very intuitive and easy enough for children to use without help, once they have been shown how to use it.

Give it a try!

But I don't like him!

What do you do when your students complain in front of the class about being put in a group with another student? When nobody in the class likes one student because of his problematic behaviour in the past? When several parents threatened to remove their children from the school because of this one "difficult" child?

John (fictional name) is an extremely bright eight-year-old, very short for his age, but intellectually more advanced than many of the nine and ten year olds in his class. Prone to aggressive and challenging behaviour in previous years, John is, after the first two lessons, working fine. There has been no particularly conflictive behaviour on his part, except when provoked by another student.

However, nobody wants to work with John. Of course, John realises this and therefore reacts to their lack of friendliness and kindness with more of the same.

It is going to be hard to undo several years of negative experience that the other children have had with John, but hopefully not impossible. I would like to start straightaway by introducing games or activities that will help integrate John more and foster a positive and kind classroom atmosphere. However, I'm not sure how to go about it. If the children were younger, I feel it would be easier. These children are around ten years old. If you have any ideas or experience of this type of problem, I'd love to hear about how you attempted to solve it.

Thanks in advance :)

Classroom Routines for Young Learners: Circle Time

Circle Time is a period of the lesson where all the learners sit in a circle with the teacher. Often this is at the beginning of the lesson, when it helps get the children focussed and attentive. When children come into school on a Monday morning or, in my case, in the afternoons, their heads are full of interesting thoughts about what they have done or seen at the weekend, what they did at school this morning, what happened on the way to school, what they are going to watch on TV after the class and so on. There are two ways of getting children to forget all this interesting stuff that is occupying their thoughts: the first is distraction - maybe showing them something unusual, saying something funny or doing something silly, although we don't really want to excite them too much - that would have the opposite effect to what we really want. The other is sitting down and allowing the children to talk about all those things that preoccupy them. Depending on the situation, both methods can be useful, but I find that having Circle Time at the beginning is a nice routine to have with young learners.

So how does Circle Time work?

Well, the first thing is to have the classroom arranged in an appropriate way before the children come in. If you have space, a rug for the children to sit on is great (those cold marble floors we have here are terribly uncomfortable) but if not you can just arrange the chairs in a circle. The children should leave any coats, bags or materials on their desks/pegs or whatever, outside the circle. If the children have brought in something to show to the class, it is best to take it off them until it is their turn to speak, otherwise they will be easily distracted by this plaything.

Once everyone is sitting down quietly, you may like to ask a question about the weekend/school/holidays to get things started, but more often than not several of the children will be bursting to tell you something, and this will lead to everyone else having something to say, whether or not this is related. Now, some rules are necessary here, to prevent everyone from interrupting each other, speaking all at once, or dominating the time you have.
The main rule is that only one person can speak at a time and everyone else must wait their turn. This is easier said than done. The younger they are, the harder it is for children to understand the concept of turn-taking, so we need to aid them in some way. One way is by having some kind of toy/ball/puppet that the speaker holds. Only the child holding this object can speak, the others have to ask for the object before they can speak. If you have a class mascot or puppet, this is ideal. Another option is to have all the children's names or photos in a bag or box, and the child whose name is taken out is the one who gets to speak. The main thing is to make sure the children know what the rules of Circle Time are and how it works. It is essential to limit this time to five or ten minutes, so that it doesn't take over the whole lesson. This is especially important when Circle Time is conducted mostly in L1. You can make sure the children are aware by holding up a toy clock which shows how much time is left.

One of the advantages of Circle Time is that it can help foment the skill of listening to others, which is something that young children find very difficult. It will often be the case that each child is thinking about what they are going to say and is sitting there with their hand up just waiting to be chosen and is paying absolutely no attention to what is being said. One way of encouraging children to listen is by rewarding any comments they make about what was said before. This could be a simple "Excellent listening!" or you could give the "best listener" a sticker at the end of Circle Time.

Show and tell can also be a fun way to start the lesson and can also be done in Circle Time. Each day a different child can bring something in. I have done this in the past and children have brought in anything from a small toy, a sticker album to a stone they found in the school playground. I usually encourage the child in question to pass around their object so that the others can see it clearly and touch it.

We can also have Circle Time at the end of the lesson. I am going to introduce this in my young learner lessons this year, and possibly with older students too (although with the adults I think "Round Up" or "Lesson Review" would be a better name!). This is what is known as a plenary or lesson review and its objective is to round up what has been covered in the lesson and clarify any problems. The teacher can make a note of any gaps in knowledge that will need to be covered again. Use the Circle Time in the last five minutes of each lesson to remind the children of what they have learnt or practised that lesson. You could play a ball game (still sitting in the circle) to review vocabulary or structures. This review stage has the extra benefit of when parents ask their children what they have learnt in class today, they should remember something!

I have focused on very young learners in this post, but something similar can be useful with all age groups. Older teens and adults can find it beneficial to ease into English at the beginning of the lesson with a simple conversation about the weekend, and it also gives the teacher the opportunity to outline the learning objectives of the lesson. In the review session, students can evaluate themselves against these learning objectives and notice the areas on which they may need more work or practice.