Very young learners (resource books for teachers)

1 The creative classroom Syllabus and lesson planning Designing a syllabus A syllabus for pre-school children will be quite different from one for older learners. First of all, most children of this age cannot yet read and write, or make the kind of abstract deductions that even a child of seven can make. The children will still be gaining basic skills such as holding a crayon or pencil, colouring in, relating the real thing to a pictorial representation of it, being able to recognize shapes, sorting and classifying, recognizing similarities and differences, using scissors, glue, and other implements. Any syllabus will have to take all these things into consideration. Whereas older children could be expected to follow a clear structural progression and to acquire some basic grammar rules, small children will learn better by mimicking and using language in context. It is quite normal for native-speaker children to say things like ''I did went'' at the age of four or five, and so in the early stages it is better not to worry too much about grammatical correctness but to get the children to enjoy using the language. This is best achieved by topic-led work. In many countries there is no prescriptive syllabus for pre-school teaching. This has the advantage of giving teachers the freedom to design the syllabus around the children''s own needs and interests, but the disadvantage is that teachers have no guidelines as to what they should teach and how they should set about it. We hope that the teaching suggestions contained in this book will help you work out and implement your own syllabus. How you plan your syllabus and your lessons will depend on your teaching situation, but as far as possible it would be a good idea to link what you are teaching to what the children are learning in their pre-school classes in their own language. If you are their teacher all the time this will be easier, but if not, you may need to liaise with their other teachers and their parents/guardians. It is important to show the children that English is a means of communication and that it can be a vehicle through which they learn other things. Although this book is divided into topic areas in the order that we consider most relevant to small children, it does not constitute a syllabus and you will need to decide the order in which you wish to present language. A typical order might be: 1 Identification—name (verb—am, is, are) 2 Numbers, age (verb—am, is, are) 3 Parts of the body (verb—I''ve got...) 4 Colours, Description (verbs—am, is are, I''ve got...) 5 Family (verb—I''ve got...) This is only a suggestion as there are no hard and fast rules about creating a syllabus. You may find it useful to find out what the latest craze is (dinosaurs, Batman, etc.) before planning your course. With this age-group exposure to a wide range of language through stories, songs, videos, etc. is very important, and we should try to build up a vast passive knowledge (in the same way as children learning their first language). It is vital to remember that the children are very young and that we are aiming to make their first exposure to English an enjoyable one. They have many years of learning ahead of them and they will have enough hurdles to jump later on. If their first experience of English (or any other language) is pleasurable, they will have a positive attitude towards it for the rest of their lives. If your pupils have had no contact with English before, it is important to start off with simple, basic language and to recycle it in as many ways as possible. Lesson planning How much can small children reasonably be expected to learn in one lesson? Although children might seem to have no trouble understanding and using the language being presented, this does not mean that they have learnt it, and only repeated exposure and recycling over many lessons will ensure that they are able to use the language independently. Fortunately, young children like what is familiar and want the same story, song, etc. again and again. Your lesson planning will depend on your children and how long you see them for. If your lessons are more than fifteen minutes in length, you need to keep the children''s interest by changing activities every five or ten minutes. This is why it is important to have a wide variety of activities. Some children work more quickly than others, so it is useful to have some toys, games, or jigsaws for them to play with, or pictures to colour in, while the other children are finishing. With small children it can help to have an established routine. It gives them a sense of security and they know what to expect. You can have signals which indicate a change of activity. For example, a whistle might indicate an active game, a piece of calm or classical music the prelude to a story, a clap the introduction to a rhyme or chant. It does not really matter what your signals are but once they become an established routine, it will be easier to organize the children. A possible lesson plan might be as follows: 1 A familiar song 2 New language 3 Craft activity connected with the new language 4 A song, rhyme, or chant connected with the new language 5 A familiar active game or activities with Total Physical Response 6 A familiar story You need to have a balance of lively and calming activities (see Chapter 2, ''Basic language activities''). Organization of the classroom If your teaching situation allows for some flexibility, it is best to have a space in the classroom where physical activities such as dancing and active games can take place. When telling stories, taking the register, etc., if possible seat the children on a carpet in semicircles facing the teacher as this makes communication easier. If your desks are fixed to the floor, perhaps you could use the area between the teacher''s desk and the pupils'' desks. It is important to have a place where the children''s work can be displayed. If the classroom is used for other subjects perhaps there could be an ''English corner''. Class management Children of this age are not used to pair or group work and the activities will generally be wholeclass, choral-type work led by the teacher or done on an individual basis. However, it is important that children of this age learn to co-operate. Games, role-play, and joint efforts (see 1.4, ''House register'') all contribute to this end. It is not easy to organize small children into a homogeneous group. In many pre-school classes a large amount of time is spent on free or semi-directed play with just some of the time spent on whole-group activities such as story-telling or singing. There are often helpers to organize the rest of the children while the teacher deals with individuals or small groups. However, in the majority of schools the situation is very different. Classes are large and teachers often receive no assistance at all. English teachers may see the children for one or more periods a week varying in length between 15 minutes to an hour or more. This means that different strategies will need to be employed according to the situation. Most teaching will tend to be teacher-centred and opportunities for free play will be minimal due to the classroom setup and the need to expose the children to the target language as soon as possible. Although some of the work will involve whole-class activities such as choral work, question and answer, chanting and singing, in other activities, such as crafts, the children will be working individually. If there is a mix of ages or abilities it may be necessary to divide the class into smaller groups according to their developmental age and deal with them separately so that while one group is colouring and cutting, for example, another group is listening to a story or doing some specific language practice. This sounds difficult to organize, but it is preferable to forcing some children to do things they are not ready for or boring those who are ready to go on to something more challenging. If possible, you can use the corners of the classroom as special areas: one corner could have some toys, one could have some games, another could have some picture-books and old magazines and catalogues. If some children have finished their work quickly they could go to one of the corners and play for a few minutes. When most of the children have finished an activity, they can be involved in something else such as a story or a song while the others have time to complete their work. Sometimes children just do not want to join in. When this happens, it is better not to make an issue of it. They may be hungry, tired, or anxious about some aspect of the activity. Usually when they see that the others are having a good time, they will want to join in. If possible, enlist the help of parents who might be willing to participate and help children with going to the toilet as well as setting up craft activities etc. Some might even welcome the chance to learn English! If you feel that a particular activity is not going well, do not be afraid to change tack and do something you know the children love. You can always come back to the original activity on another day when the children are more receptive. There will inevitably be a fair amount of noise, especially when the children get excited during an active game. If possible, play some of the games in the school playground or field. Classroom language Children can pick up a lot of language through the normal day-today routine of what we do in class. Greetings, instructions, etc. should all be carried out in English. From the beginning you can respond in English even if the children use their first language, but gradually encourage them to use English themselves. Non-native teachers of English often ask what expressions they should use. This is very difficult to say as native speakers vary a lot in what they use, but a few of the most common are given below: Instructions (teacher) - Look at me / Listen to me/Could you come here please? Put your {coat) on/take your (coat) off. Don''t do that/Stop (pushing, picking your nose, etc.) Quiet, please/Pay attention, please. Please get into line. Make a circle/hold hands/drop hands. Put your hand up. This is how you (colour, fold, cut, stick, tear) it. Go andfindlfetch me a ... Give me your papers. Praising It is important to praise small children''s efforts. Here are some useful phrases: - Well done! - Very good. - That''s a nice picture. Requests (pupils) - Can I have a ...? Can I go to the toilet? Can I borrow a ... ? Can I clean the board/give out the papers/collect the papers? Clarification (pupils) - What''s [hermano] in English? - I don''t understand. For more examples of classroom language see the books Use of English in the Classroom by Sagrario Salaberri or A Handbook of Classroom English by Glyn Hughes (see Further Reading, page 187). Activity types Story-telling and drama When we are teaching pre-literate children, we need to revert to time-honoured story-telling skills and use visual aids, dramatic tone of voice, mimicry, gesture, and mime to bring the story alive. You do not have to be good at acting to keep a group of children enthralled. Even though modern children are brought up on a diet of television, they still enjoy the human contact of a real live person telling them a story. When telling a story, it is important to create a close and intimate atmosphere. The children can sit in semicircles on a carpet or cushions round your chair. This should ensure that your face, hands, and visual aids are visible to all the children. It is better to tell a story than to read it from a book, in order to create better interaction with the children and to have eye contact with them. You can write down a few cues and these, together with any pictures and drawings, should help you remember the story. Later on, when you want to encourage children to start reading books, it will be a good idea to read some of the stories from books, showing the children the pictures in order to stimulate interest in the books themselves. From the beginning encourage the children to join in with the story where there is repetition. By the second or third telling you can start leaving bits out or altering the story, which will have the double value of checking on listening comprehension and encouraging the children to speak. There are many children''s stories available, both traditional and modern, and you will probably choose your favourites. It might be better to start off with traditional stories from the children''s own cultural background as they may already be familiar to the children and this will aid comprehension. If English books are not available, you can use a book written in the children''s own language for the pictures and tell the story yourself. There is a danger of oversimplifying the language when telling a story, but story-books written for native speakers are fine with this agegroup and it is essential to expose them to fluent and natural English. Stories are usually about (imaginary) things which happened in the past, and the stories in this book include past tense forms. Obviously we are not suggesting that you should teach the children how to form tenses such as the simple past or past continuous, but in the context of a story they will hear them and understand them naturally, which is a good preparation for active use when the children are older. A dramatic way to present a story is by using an overhead projector and creating a shadow-play. The darkened room, the focused light, and the movement of the figures create an atmosphere which has long been appreciated in the theatre tradition. Older children can prepare the cut-outs which are to be used. Alternatively, you can create a shadow-play theatre by hanging up a sheet to act as a screen and shining a strong light behind it. The children themselves will want to tell stories, often about the drawings they are doing or what has happened to them. You can encourage this by asking questions. Later on, when they are beginning to read and write, they can write and illustrate their ''news''. At this age children spend a lot of time in a fantasy world, sometimes conversing and playing games with an imaginary friend, sometimes ''being'' a cowboy, robot, dinosaur, nurse, superman, etc. The older the child, the more elaborate the creation will generally be. While children of three or four may just play at being a character for a short while, children of six or seven construct an elaborate plot to their game. This creativity can be harnessed in the classroom by encouraging the children to re-enact stories you have told them. This works particularly well with some of the old favourites such as ''Little Red Riding Hood'', ''The gingerbread man'', ''The three billy-goats'', etc. The children quickly pick up the repeated dialogues and can use them appropriately in their dramatizations. (See ''Pretend play'', page 26.) Some teachers like to tell stories using a felt board and figures cut out of felt, which is a useful way of illustrating the meaning. Nowadays, velcro is a useful material and figures with velcro backing can be stuck to a fuzzy board. If these are unavailable, figures can be stuck on to a whiteboard with sticky tape, Blu-tack, or plasticine. Alternatively, you can use magnets to stick up pictures on some of the modern whiteboards. With all of these methods the children can help to prepare the characters and to move the figures when you tell the story. For more ideas and tips, see Storytelling with Children by Andrew Wright in this series, which also contains helpful guide-lines for simple board drawings. Using story-books and videos Very young children cannot yet read, but it is a good idea to interest them in books so that they want to learn. As well as telling stories from memory, read them stories from picture books. Choose a book which is short and has large, clear pictures. Make sure all the children can see the book and pause to show them the pictures as you are reading. In Further Reading (page 187) we suggest some books which are suitable for very young children. Some books, for example Where''s Spot? by Eric Hill and The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, are available in many languages and in bilingual versions. If you can''t find books in English, use books in the children''s language and paraphrase them in English. You can still show the pictures and the children won''t know the difference! Many children''s stories are available in both book and video form (and some now on CD-ROM). Some children will be familiar with story characters from TV but not with the books they originally came from. You can use both versions to help the children to understand the story, and to stimulate interest in books and reading. The different media help children to use different strategies for understanding the language. Videos are an excellent resource and have the advantage of combining stories with animation. They give a lot of language input and it does not even matter if they have subtitles in the pupil''s language as very young children cannot read yet. There is a danger that the children will want to watch passively and although that might be justified when they are very tired, you can do predicting and pre-watching activities with them. For example, before watching a Postman Pat episode you can ask them if he has a cat or a dog and what colour it is. You can pre-teach some words so that the children will recognize them in the video. After viewing, you can ask the children to re-enact a video story, or to draw a picture about it, which can lead to more language practice. It is not advisable to use long videos or cartoons which simply consist of the characters trying to hurt each other. The best ones are the short episodes produced for children''s television. Characters such as Postman Pat, Fireman Sam, Brum, Spot, The Mr Men, and Rupert Bear are very popular with children and have good underlying educational principles. There are some specially-produced videos for teaching English such as Wizadora, the Longman Fairy Stories, and Muzzy in Gondoland, which are also very useful for teaching this age-group. Here are some guidelines for choosing a video to use in the English class with very young children: - It should be short (5-10 minutes) - It must have a good storyline - It must be suitable for the age-group - The language should be easy to understand by watching the actions - Think about what activities you could do to help the children understand it, for example acting it out. Some children''s videos are available in many countries and languages. Some do not have a soundtrack, but are still useful for teaching English. You can talk about what happens and get the children to predict what happens next. But don''t forget to let the children enjoy the video story as well as using it to practise their English! Below are some examples of how to use books and videos in class. You do not have to follow all these steps and they can be divided over several lessons. Children of this age love hearing the same story over and over again.