Let the kids talk!

Three videos here, highlighting how even very young learners can quickly become content creators in their English langauge learning journey! Each of these examples are a result of after reading projects, from graded readers, which all of our students at Luna invest in. We use these readers in a myriad of ways - not 'just' reading...we try to 'milk' them for all the're worth!

Misaki's Cake is the outcome from Oxford University Press' Read & Imagine graded reader called 'The Cake Machine'. Inventor Grandpa has a fairly calamitous baking experience...our children do better with a drawing project (homework) & then guided with a writing task in class to describe their lovely, dreamy, cake creations.

My approach as teacher is to do the background prep quickly, then let the students take control of the creative process, using the iPad + Chatterkids app intuitively. Recording themselves & criticising their own speaking (want to be smoother, or quicker, or not stop in the middle or get a word wrong...) is an easy fix - just re-record against the thirty-second limit. Their own pressure, not teacher's! As you can hear, the focus is on far more than just a list of ingredients - a proper description. As a quick finisher, Misaki was first - after that, she was first assistant & bling direction for whoever finished next. Teacher - job done (help the slower finishers with gentle suggestions & corrections).

 

What do you think of Misaki's cake?

A twist on this exercise I love with slightly older young learners, is to have them interview each other about their after reading projects. Here is Moe's description of her favourite animal (her real pet), from OUP's Read & Imagine title 'In the Treehouse'. Here the pressure is on both learners to ask, and answer, a set of questions quickly...so of course they want to practice a few times before hitting the record button - who said 'drilling' is boring?! Love Moe's "Wolfie"?

And from another class, Yuri & Koharu tackle the same task from their reader. 

Extensive reading has obvious benefits - so does intensive reading...the two do not need to be mutually exclusive. As you can hear, students are empowered with being able to share their imaginations and are unencumbered with stage fright, instead collaborating and being bold. Love these outcomes!

Let the kids think!

 I'm a firm believer in teachers waiting for students to actually ask for support. If you're playing a game, and really want to take your turn & progress, then the motivation is high...but teacher, don't jump in to facilitate. Instead, wait for the language to percolate, language attempted, missing word isolated.

And wait for an actual request (weaker learners who are unable to verbally ask for help will indicate no-verbally they need a boost - watch carefully). Other students might be able to help - if not, then chances are they'll all need to use this same 'unknown' word again soon and will listen/practice/rehearse before their turn comes around.

Similarly, let students self-correct. Accept what they are trying to say, and let them reflect on their output/pronunciation/accuracy. Maybe teacher indicates that something was not quite right, or it needed to be faster or more fluently delivered? Not teacher driven, but students striving to 'get it right' on their own.

Teacher's role in any game, for my money, is to facilitate as much English with as little active participation as possible. Encourage, keep the focus, make sure we're playing nicely and having fun. For sure, allow books open to glance at key structures, question or sentence structures...but let the players do all the work. Can't see any English here? Because it's all been absorbed already :)

Where are all the words?!

Magic Ingredients! App-smashing with a reader

One app I really enjoy using with our graded readers as a boost to after reading projects, is to make sure that all of the students have taken time (and been shown how) to produce full, grammatically sound, sentences.

In this case, after reading OUP's Read & Imagine beginner level title The Cake Machine, easy homework was to draw their own 'dream' cake. The blank space below 'describe your cake' is a forbidding prospect without guidance...teachers job to ask leading questions, and then help everyone agree on their responses (all different, of course, but simliar in structure.

Obviously, most of the structures & vocabulary they need are high frequency from the book they've just read (and enjoyed) + the Picture Dictionary at the back a rich resource. "New words" (our own ingredients) an easy share on the whiteboard.

Bit of teacher speed needed to photo & crop drawing into the app, and then gave a example of 'how to' for early finishers, who get on with their project enhancement. Then they help the slower finishers through the tech hurdles and encourage the narrating part (they read their own writing into a 30 second limit). 

 

Teaching - and assessing - Young Learners

Calling all teachers of Young Learners in Kanto...here's a great opportunity for you to share your teaching skills, add some internationally recognised PD to your CV. And top up your bank account from time to time. Bingo?!

Cambridge Assessment English's most active Centre in Japan, Kawaijuku JP026, needs YOU! Training for Speaking Examiners to deliver & assess the Young Learners suite of speaking tests is only being run once this year in Tokyo over the July 11-12 weekend - so get cracking with signing up before all the seats are snaffled up > details https://lnkd.in/gH_-Fte3 Please check you meet Minimum Professional Requirements - applicants must reside in Japan & be eligible to work ie have the relevant visa....and enjoy teaching children!

Breaks my heart to have to say that Luna is no longer a Cambridge Centre for Young Learners (nor any other exam) as we basically saved this brand in Japan. 

Assumptions - a hand game that tanked!

We make assumptions all the time - mine was to expect my young students to be able to take turns. How old do you need to be before you can manage this 'simple' chant with hands in a stack?

One potato, two potatoes seemed so simple, but boy was it a hard to achieve! Understanding the 'drill' was a hard sell. It's not a familiar chant to Japanese kids. Sticking to the beat, one at a time, was anathema.

Taking turns with a partner vs 'me first' or 'mine on top to win' strategies...

Moving a hand from bottom to top, a new concept...

Keeping up with the speed & remembering English numbers...

Including all group members, not pushing, don't want to stand up...so many variables I'd not factored into this quick & easy hand game!

This group having a second go, a week after trying for the first time. A bit of familiarity helped, but I think you can see for yourself how complex this little game is for little ones! A learning opportunity, no?!

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 ;)

On Thin Ice - the graded reader (not the state of Greenland)

Reading for detail - Read & Imagine

As you can easily see, there's a lot of text on the page, which most learners in Japan would baulk at immediately!

Our 'can do' learners at Luna have got used to this psychological barrier & can jump it with ease.

• Quiet reading? Yes
• Reading independently (at home)? Yes
• Overcome 'new' words? Yes
• Familiar with characters? Yes
• Enjoy the storylines? Yes
• Recycle language? Yes
• Personalisation with 'after reading' projects? Yes
• Work together with comprehension tasks? Yes
• Gain confidence with pronunciation of longer words? Yes
• Notice direct speech markers (punctuation)? Yes
• Read ahead for markers? Yes
• Look back in the story to refresh? Yes
• Travel in time & space, around the world? Yes
• Learn really cool stuff? Yes
• Put proper intonation into longer utterances (taking turns 'in character')? Yes
• Listening skills explored? Yes
• Gain confidence spelling? Yes
• Volume of vocabulary? Yes
• Expanding vocabulary sets beyond limited textbook content? Yes
• Yes.Yes. Yes.

There are so many benefits to our dedication at Luna to incorporating graded readers into our students' language learning careers. One of them is our adoption of Oxford's Read and Imagine + Read and Discover series - designed for young language learners with audio and activity books to enhance the learner experience. In our opinion, Oxford's Reading Tree is not fit for purpose, and the Extensive Reading Foundation's continued idolisation of that culturally loaded & unsuitable series is frankly annoying - driven by 'experts' who lecture from their high perches at universities without any idea what they're talking about wrt young learners, accessibility, learning styles, affordability. You never saw Oxford's Story Tree, which WAS ideal for the EFL classroom & independent home-readers?

Rant over? Not really!

Revisiting Sapporo - a Cambridge weekend

It's been quite a while since I last visited Sapporo for work, and many things have changed - Centres have openned (and closed), people have moved on - physically and/or professionally. 

So quite a bit of trepidation 'going back', as a lot of water has passed under the proverbial bridge, and an existing team of Speaking Examiners were probably not too excited about the organisational changes that have taken place. Maybe so, but I was relieved to meet a really nice team of  really 'can do' teachers who obviously care about the bigger picture of delivering Cambridge exams in Sapporo, and not carrying any grudges - just getting on with things.

Some of this group I have come across online through zoom certification meetings during covid, so this was a welcome opportunity to actually meet & get to know people, find the rugby/BBQ fans, establish who knows who & for how long, what the various hierarchies are & the employment faultlines etc.

I was very grateful to be accepted into the general flow of things, with JP026 Kawaijuku/Keiko Ohashi integral to making things go smoothly. We added new members to the team as well as re-certifying existing SEs across a number of levels - in all we tackled Young Learners Starters & Movers, A2:Key, B1:Preliminary, B2:First and C1:Advanced over the weekend, with folks coming & going like musical chairs.By the end, a bit of a blur, but a very good one. A number of new friendships established, I hope, and one in particulr rekindled.

My mum thinks I can't read or spell!

Refereeing each other!

Delighted to share the news that mummy is horribly mistaken, and that her soon to be 10 year old is battering all the reading & spelling challenges I can think of!

The pathway has been - not trying too hard at the start...on the carpet variety rug-rat class to get used to just doing 'different' stuff, being brave, singing out loud, jumping about & being a 'whole' learner. Making mistakes, exploring words & having fun.

Pushing on now with Oxford Phonics World (3) and Everybody Up series + Oxford Read & Imagine graded readers > sky is the limit. A 'bullet-proof" class as they dive into any & all activities beyond the predictable. Makes my Friday afternoons a lot to look forward to and always a challenge to come up with something new & challenging!

Being bold readers

Game in play today - first time my class had seen it = Chip-O

Fantastic outcome (no idea who won!) with reading skills above level; helping each other out, and also asking for help when a bit stuck (not really stuck, just unable to decode eg consonant clusters like 'truck' or 'flag' etc which we have not got to yet). When a game is not a waste of time!

Make your own game, kiddo!

Trying to make a game...the lad succeeded but I need to go back to the drawing board slightly!

I made this game!

Two ways of trying to achieve the same thing - read! Acquiring the vocab relatively 'easy' given the fun presentation tools in Oxford Phonics World...I really wanted to make sure we implement 'look at the words' and 'flip between the pages' fluency.

Personalised art work was lovely (but a week later "What's this?" had us both a bit stumped - bear?!)

Obviously, I've nicked this idea from somewhere (apologies & willing to add a mention but I've forgotten where the brain wave came from!). I do recommend it as a way to slow down a class/build in solid review (yeah, the old drill baby drill concept!). 

Game 1 was to match a word against his drawings (my writing, 1st letter in red, as I also 'edit' the class books/workbooks) from a choice of 16 word cards...intended to be unique so each card could only go in one place (top/bottom/left/right - but I messed up!).

I can do this!

Game 2 was the other way around. Match the book's flashcards to the four templates. No children were harmed making this game - but many brain cells were fired into learning mode :)

Give me a thumbs up if you like this idea?!

Shizuku's animated Lion - after reading project

 After reading Crocodile in the House, and a confused robot, Shizuku couldn't wait to talk about her favourite animal, a lion. Lovely drawing and great answers written dow, this interview with a classmate was a first take success! Reading/talking aloud the final act to complete an after reading project - no performance pressure or stumbling over unknown words - rather, unstoppable keenness to get it said!

Nice work Haruki, getting over the giggles to ask the questions quickly. Another stunning Friday success story at Luna!

Meet Moe's (talking) pet dog!

 

Check out Moe's project from her reading book (OUP's "Read & Imagine" series 'Crocodile in the House'). In this Chatterkids talking photo, she's interviewed by her classmate to read her own answers from the prompts provided. Yes, one word answers would 'do' but why not 'go for it' and fully exploit the chance to say more?!

Cute drawing, and lovely pronunciation = great job Moe!

 

A rabbit talks!

 Koharu wrote about her favourite animal, and talked about it/recorded herself using an iPad app (chatterpix) - as you can hear, her pronunciation is very intelligible with intonation across longer uttereances under control, and word stress + individual sounds clearly enunciated. All of which should add up to success in a #younglearners #CEFR_A1 #CambridgeMovers speaking test

 

Ten little fingers - maximizing wordwall

Wordwall keyboard skills

When half the class is away, the rest of us will play! 

Rather than push ahead and lose classmates, we circled the wagons and consolidated together :)

Luna's own brand on Wordwall is a dedicated series of materials per text book/readers that our students enjoy enormously; reusing the vocabulary in slightly different contexts/different images...pause for thought, reasons for openning our books & checking each others' spelling...any and every which way to recycle, drill, and thrill!

To polish off our fun, we played a Detective Game about a monster - arms, legs & ears all a bit strange! 

Monster time - Study Cat

Let's talk! Students with after reading projects

We think these two young learners really do speak for themselves! 

 

Smashing phonics on a desktop!

 You got the idea straight away...

You know your letter sounds, and your homework was great...letter writing is spot on and your pronunciation is just right. But the other student in the class is absent today & I really do NOT want to move on until they can also get the input to proceed. So instead of doing this at home (which is tough, because you need a parent to help you on a PC (or use their device & find the link from Google Classroom)...lets have some fun in-class, so you can read/spell/pronounce all the words you know, set a high score & gain confidence with not only your English, but peripheral tech skills too!

Check out this task (and you can choose various ways to play & also use a number of print options too) as a review 'game' for CVC words with central /e/ from Oxford Phonics World 2. Piece of cake to make (but no need, I aleady created stuff for all chapters for the first three levels!) and many ways to implement one-to-one, group work, books open or closed, asynchronous, in class or at home!

Milking a glossary with Wordwall

Making the most out of even the simplest graded readers!

Familiar vocabulary recycled in any good graded reader series, but the secret is to make sure students can actually read and spell the words, use the vocabulary flexibly (not just recognise a particular picture & blurt it)!

We love using the various applications/games that wordwall offers, with the added twist of PC skils (mouse/keyboard), letter recognition (upper/lower case) & QWERTY layout (not a linear ABC from the poster on the wall). Have a go yourself here, and consider all the ways your learners can recycle, drill, revise (you know, the deadly sins of teacher talk!) both at home, or in the classroom when a buddy is absent.

Old fashioned, but it works!

I've always liked making materials for classes but kind of got out of the habit with so many digital resources to play with.

My number one preference with younger learners is Wordwall, as I can easily import class sets from Quizlet (been using that site for over 20 years) from resources previously compiled - be it text book lexical sets or glossaries from readers. The twist with Wordwall is that any images offered will not be the same as Quizlet = students do not just memorise the pictures. Once made, any one set can be used in a variety of different game options, and also be printed out as worksheets.

However, screen time can be overdone and younger learners need "hand time" as well - feels like something new & different.

Two halves of the 'gap fill'

To encourage question asking - and a follow up - as well as requiring students to actually listen to the reply and 'do something', this pair work exchange is easy to prepare and engaged students from start to finish. Target language was vocabulary items (classroom/school bag objects + colours)..."What is it?" (pointing at a blank square) then "What colour is it? Listener draws the item in the colour, and labels their picture (book open to spell OK if necessary). To fill up the grid I also added students' names = draw portraits of each other. 

Only 'banned' item = erasers, to stop this turning into an art class!

This worked one-on-one with "can do" kids...in teams when the group needed a bit of peer-support = added bonus of "your turn" etc classroom language.

Exercise complete

Students themselves decided to label their pictures, which was an added bonus to plenty of speaking/listening, with teacher gently making sure good intonation/full answers, and not too much time spent drawing (a relief to the less artistically gifted like me!)

This suited reviewing 2 units of vocaulary from OUP's Everybody Up 1

The second activity, to also review the same content...downloaded & printed the picture dictionary from https://elt.oup.com/student/everybodyup for the relevant units (Although from 3rd Ed, matches 2nd. Ed content)

Four-in-a-row template

Then a scissors & glue job (could also be a digital effort with excel I know, but this was quicker for me!) to fit onto a Mark Hancock game template of old. Can be played 1 v 1, or two teams; both worked equally well, and generated a lot of chatter. Quite a lot L1, but that was totally focussed to game play strategy/winning, with team mates (which was beyond my young learners in English)...whilst at the same time they were code-switching to read the vocabulary/name the pictures or ask each other "What is it?" & "What colour is it?"...because they really wanted to. When a drill is not a drill :)

Play? Roll the dice & choose a word from that box. Aim = 4-in-a-row. First past the post or fill the whole board, depending on time etc. Use - two different colour pencils. Use one board for each pair/team to share, or just one board to get passed backwards & forwards - I decided against this option as I realised half the class was always looking at the words upside-down.

Teacher? Sit back and enjoy the reading/speaking/writing magic :)

The template I made on the right - obviously colour needed for colours, but b/w will usually work nicely as the artwork is clear/matches the text book.

Game over!

The finished (yeah, messy!) Books open? If necessary...I prefer a sneaky peak only if "stuck". It worked out that teams helped each other or not very 'sotto voce' giving the game away if they knew the word first eg "Oh no, pencil!"

Easily replicated for any review a language teacher can think of!

Our Amazing Picnics - after reading project from young learners

Reading is a crucial part for any language learners' path to vocabulary acquisition/activation, familiarity & flexibility with grammatical structures, coping with long texts, exploring new as well as familiar topics...and letting imaginations run away (a bit like the robot character does in this yarn when it gets supercharged by 'fantastic' lightning!).

This after reading project page, in an Oxford Read & Imagine level 2 graded reader (The Big Storm),  was all about personalising the background story to the adventure > going for a picnic. Sub-topics here recycle vocabulary sets of food (likes & dislikes), friends (physical descriptions), weather, places to go around town...we all love recycling language! (This is approx CEFR A1; 450 Headwords at this level, 689 words in this title)

As with all young learners, some love drawing & in Japan, have ninja-like skills - others (like me) have a complete phobia about blank drawing spaces and will produce the bare minimum as quickly as possible (and only after considerable cajoling!). NB This was not an arts/crafts lesson - rather, get us some content to work off, with the writing aspect my targetted outcome. (As with any open-ended task like this in my classroom in Japan, I try hard to minimise the use of erasers...a quick correction or fine tune is fine; rubbing out/erasing 20 minutes-worth of work & starting over is not!).

Regardless of artistic skills, we all needed encouragement to look back through the book to get 'more' ideas...and the same applied to finding the words we subsequently 'needed' to produce the written output. Importantly, don't cramp the artwork with this 'news' in advance (otherwise you'll end with carefully chosen/limited drawings!)...so then to find the words/structures we need to describe our work. From the story already (quizlet set of the glossary here by the way!)

 

Rei the reader!

I want to read!

Adopting Oxford Phonics World as our 'go to' phonics resource/series at Luna International was a no brainer, especially with covid-induced needs for online resources/presentation tools. We love the clarity of the materials, the logical presentation & progression. I am not a fan of the North American drawl that undermines accurate pronunciation in the audio of some units...but, I am very picky.

Unfortunately, we now have little brothers & sisters not even needing to come to Luna because they've grabbed a sibling's classbook and submerged themselves into the learning!

Screen time smasher!

Big brother Yoshi I have known since kindy...and he's been learning with us at Luna as well for a quite while now. He used to hide behind his classmates & not say 'boo' to a goose, but no more - a confident reader, neat writer & speller, and almost glib with answering too easy questions! Loosing games no longer a 'problem' either :)

I've been told his five-year old brother Rei is #OPW fan number one! As you can see, he's an independent learner...and has had to have a home screen time limit for the OPW app imposed to 15 minutes (maximum!) daily. Oh my word - if only we had that 'problem' with our students :)

I blame his parents..

Not fair?

As you can see in the pic above & videos below, Rei is an independent learner already. So, dad will be out of a job soon (as well as me!). 

Just imagine if every five year old in Japan had this kind of leg-up from mum & dad before they even get to elementary school? Game changer! Goodbye 'romaji' crap & katakana cribbing. Well done mum & dad...and thank you dad for choosing Luna International again for your family...like your parents asked me to teach you & your buddies when you were at elementary school.

Turbo-charged learning like this could/should be a game-changer for Japanese children. Tragically, I doubt very many decision makers within MEXT or BoE have the first clue about how vital a grasp of phonics is...especially with the ongoing race to the bottom which is 'providing' language teaching to children in kindergarten & elementary schools (and JHS/HS) from the lowest bidder/freshest face on zoom or YouTube/flashiest app on some administrator's TikTok feed.