Professional Development from an "expert"

 I'd been losing sleep for weeks over the Christmas & New Year holiday, about an invitation I'd accepted to be a panelist for OUP about teaching pre-primary children.

I think they asked me because everybody else was busy (shopping for daughter's wedding dress or at a conference in Turkey...instagram is insightful!)...

So this time last week I strapped into presenter chair with my ideas printed out (large font, don't want to squint to camera!). I really appreciated the rehearsal we'd had a week or two prior, to get the idea of the flow & pace to expect, and to actually 'meet' the other people involved (Taiwan, UK, Korea, Japan). Who would speak when, and trying hard to relate with what other speakers were saying naturally.

Behind the curtain!

In the green room - what's that?! Just me. Am I in the wrong meeting? Does my camera & mic work (they did, my speaker decided to mimic the inside of a submarine though) and then boom, off goes the rollercoaster. Don't fidget. Don't fold your arms. Slow down. Use names. Don't talk over people. Relax - there's only 1,000 or so people watching this webinar (and they're recording it for Youtube) ...no stress. Don't look in the chat column!

"...and thank you to our experts, Yumi & Jim, goodbye!"

Fastest hour of all time. 

What was I talking about? With quite a bit of on the floor experience at kindergarten, how to survive, basically, teaching pre-primary learners. There is not a lot of professional training available to language teachers for this age group, and any teacher new to this part of the market is daunted by a myriad of unknowns...When I did my CELTA in the last century, I was asked to give an expert opinion on the last afternoon of the course for 'teaching children', as I was the only person who had done so previously. So, a bit like that! The publisher had noticed me tagging their product on instagram I think. It is a great product, and makes my life every week a lot less stressful and a lot more predictable. 

What could possibly go wrong, working with little kids?! Now that's where you need strategies! Be it music, transitions, behavioural rules, achieving realistic expectations, self-preservation...working in an unfamiliar environment with things you have to carry/plug in/not break...wifi you can't access or no screen to project onto...someone just ate your flashcard and/or their crayons...the homeroom teacher disappeared to cope with a 'code brown'. Here's a topic I could keep going on for quite a while without referencing childhood psychology, methodology tags, curriculum design etc. How to get to class number 32 in a year's time, with a smile still on everyone's face.

The product? Toy Team from Oxford University Press...recommended bookseller = English Books because Colin Bethell is a great bloke, really helpful, and a mate since before I suddenly got famous(?!).

Get yourself noticed by sharing the good, the bad and the ugly from your lessons. Share your aspirations, your fears, and your fails. Connect, network, tag products & publishers, fellow teachers & people you want to meet. Am I an expert? No, my classes were 'quite ordinary' yesterday with a dead laptop + no wifi, nauseating hayfever ;)

Take it outside!

Started this week's lesson with "Put on your shoes" song...reason being, I wanted to hurry up, hurry up, let's go outside!

A beautiful blue sky, but a bit chilly - makes sense to put on your coat! (A silly idea in summer!)

A simple game I learned from the kids = with a partner, rock/scissors/paper. Loser tags on behind winner. Find another pair, leaders do rock/scissors paper again and repeat until you have one long caterpillar/conga line :)

My take on this = play music at each challenge - I used the 1st half of the Hello song. Everyone joins in anyway because they love the song/know it, and also want to keep warm AND be on the winning team :)

In an earlier class, I played the Walking Walking song - a winner - but everyone ran off or crashed into each other > needed a rethink. This elegant solution, though I say so myself, meant everyone more or less under control, and safe, and in frame :)

In the Morning...

Wanted to share an activity we enjoyed this afternoon at Luna, reading one of Patrick Jackson's excellent Potato Pals little readers "In the Morning" - all about routines, so why not bring out the inner child in us all?!

We enjoyed ourselves; hope you do too!

Thanks for the inspiration (end permission/encouragement!) Patrick.

An inspiring colleague - I wish I was that good

Ikuko-sensei

I have had the wonderful privilege of working with this fabulous young teacher for the last two and a half years, at Sasabe kindergarten (in Matsumoto). Had to say goodbye today, but only after she melted the hearts of everyone at final assembly announcing her departure. And bless, Encho-sensei asked all the gobsmacked children "Can you hear that?"...kids looking around. "I can hear a heart beat. We are not losing Ikuko-sensei, we will have a new little friend". Awesome.

Most recently Ikuko has been senior teacher (and therefor my boss), responsible for absolutely everything from making drinks for visitors to dealing with parents, managing first aid emergencies, setting out chairs & making decorations, filling bags & co-ordinating rotas, organising parties & moving drums, jumping in at a moment's notice to cover teachers and backing up everybody on the staff. I think she maybe even changed the tyres on the school's buses!

Momo-gumi champion

When I was very new to kindy teaching, I was overwhelmed with the idea of spending a day with the teeniest ones - and a teacher who boldly told me "No English!"...she was more or less right about that, but her attitude & style was anything but - come on Jim-sensei what's this, and 'help', and...and...bowled me over with her enthusiasm, calmness in the centre of eternal storms, and love. I christened a new style of teaching after her: Smile Deprivation. The very last thing her class wanted was for her radiant smile to fade into a frown and her cheeks to puff out (a brilliant bit of body language I'd never seen deployed before in a class!) - not because the frown was a portent of teacher losing her rag, but that her happy full-face smile missing was like the sun being eclipsed. And how her little class managed each other to get that smile back asap?! And I still don't think she knows how hard that is for the rest of us triers to pull off even half as well - let alone convincingly!

It is very hard to describe how magical teachers can glide through a room shedding warmth & love without distracting everyone or putting off the room teacher. Add to the vibe in the room without being a magnet for attention? One hell of a trick. I try to slip into a room and pandemonium breaks out - kids pointing at my paunch & sotto voce "baby" until I want to clout them!

And to become a senior teacher within a very close-knit staff, some of whom peers from college and still keep that smile working? Still remember every child's name and be wonderful? A class act.

Luckiest young man alive!

I've seen loads of demo classes, countless presentations, workshops with genki this & TPR that, up & down the country. I've been in classrooms from universities & corporate HQs, high schools, you name it. I would be struggling to think of a teacher who has impressed me more, without appearing to try at all, than Ikuko-sensei. A teachers' teacher, and an absolute gem. I learned heaps watching her cast her spells.

Thank you Ikuko-sensei for sharing your classroom with me, and for being so enthusiastically wonderful. You truly are an inspiring educator. Sniff sniff!

How's the Weather? Again?

One of my favourite songs with YLs, but after a while struggling to come up with new ways to present the song and do something interesting with it - apart from the obvious song & dance routine, which is still the best bit!

My badly drawn snowflakes (you try?!), leaves and clouds + my not so bad raindrops & suns, given to each child (group of 30+, don't try this on the fly!) at tables with crayons poised for action. Usually don't ask kindergarten kids to colour on already cut-out things (end up scrubbing a lot of tables) but a bit short for time with this activity.

Pres play and watch Jim-sensei make a dope of himself waving his arms about...OK...some joining in takes place as the Q & A parts are repeated three/four times. Press pause, and ask "How's the Weather?", accept any/all correct shout outs and point to the five pictures they've got. Which one? Whole class checks by holding up a picture, changing one or two to conform (we're in Japan!) - and then colour it. I did not say which colour (wanted this to be their work) but staggered they all went for a red 'sunny' sun! When done (new group so "Finished?" "Not yet" got a lot of practice) glue your sun onto a big sheet at the front of the class.

Repeat as above through the remaining four verses - I did nominate "rainbow" for 'snowy' - and presto, the classroom has a very colourful weather chart for daily use, and a chant embedded in it/30+ little heads.

Super Simple Songs YouTube Channel Trailer

As many parents of our learners will know, we like to use a lot of songs here at Luna. We particularly love Super Simple Songs and rate them very highly...why not engage at home with your children + animation?!

How did Jim find out about SSS? At an ETJ Bookfair in Tokyo several years ago, Rob Habbick of course, introduced him to Devon Thagard.

Jumping Up!

A beginners guide to enjoying a very simple starters' song!

listen to ‘Jumping Up!’ on Audioboo

better in video, but we are early learners :)

Colours & numbers - kids in action

My students know the song quite well, but we haven't "done it this way" before. The Super Simple Song is just as it says on the tin, and very suitable for even very young learners. I wanted to make it a bit harder today, so we had a lot of flashcards on the floor, including numbers (more on that in a mo).

Make sure kids aren't going to dive headfirst at each other to get to the cards first (important!). As they hear the song mention colours, touch the card, then find other things that match around the room (having an interesting/colourful room helps a lot!).

After the song, a sit down - sort of! Leaving the flashcards on the floor we played colour bingo. Again, a bit too easy as most children quickly 'get' colours, so I wrote the word (blue, green etc) slowly on the board, asking the children to read the letters to me as I did so (taking a while to get fluent here). "That's it" = cue to go find the flashcard with the matching word - turn it over to reveal the colour. Get back to the table and do the bingo thing.

The actual bingo became a side show against the fun of reading out the words and finding the same spelling quickly.

We played the same game with numbers, and then placed the cards along the chalk board rail under the same (number) word (out of order). We played a "janken game" in teams - start either end of the row of cards, and read the card/say what is on it. When players meet in the middle, they do 'rock/scissors/paper' to decide a winner - who continues on while the other team replaces their player & start at their beginning again. This can get very noisy but is nice and simple, takes very little prep and is monitored by everyone! Weaker ones can go last & see how to do it/get prompting from team etc. I always answer if kids ask me nicely "What's this, please"!

Once we were done with the bingo game, I played another Super Simple Song "Seven Steps" and asked the children to point to the numbers in time to the music. Harder than you think! Remember, on a bingo card all the numbers are in different sequences...guaranteed giggles and re-starts & pleading to do it again (just what I wanted to do, but it was their idea!)

How do you teach colours & numbers after the first time?

Singtation

My Wednesday boys can be a bit of a handful sometimes, but today we were all literally singing off the same hymn sheet; the Black Cat song from Let's Go 1.

Like most kids, they 'know' colours already; today we were making sure we could read and follow directions to colour objects. That was 'easy', as expected, so the challenge was to listen to a song and pick out the various bits and pieces,then draw/colour what they heard. Lots of shouting and speculation as they demanded to listen again and again, until they 'got it', bit by bit.

This will only work with a strong class that has already been exposed to the language you are trying to pick out; the beauty of a song like this is the relative speed, rhythm & ellision; single words no longer carry equal stress but get joined up. "Black" and "cat" are both familiar words; stick them together naturally and you get 'blackat'; similarly "yellow" and "eyes" gives you 'yelloweyes'. Picking words out from a real context like this really helps students 'want' to reproduce the same sound themselves - and not just singing along. So a drawing/colouring task becomes a challenging listening job, which in turn works on pronunciation and thus speaking.

Another bonus for them with this kind of exercise is that it replicates the part four task in the Cambridge YLE Starters listening test. Now, isn't that nice!?