In a tree? On the ground? Under the ground? - Where does it grow?

Jungle in the classroom

The weather is hotting up and some of you may be keeping yourselves busy by tending to your garden and getting your green fingers dirty. As some of you may know back in March we ran a workshop where some able and willing volunteers planted a collection of seeds in the hopes of seeing them flourish after a rather cold and harsh winter. In fact one of the plants has grown to about the same size as some of our younger students! As these plants have proved to spark wonder and curiosity into my students I took them as inspiration to include more nature based activities within the classroom.

Enjoying the sunshine

Ideally I would love to have a huge garden where we could grow lots of different plants, especially fruit and vegetables as they are a very common topic within a young learner's curriculum. Plus we could always eat them when we get hungry during class.

Is that a mouse?

Rather than dwelling on the fact that we are inhibited by a lack of gardening space me and my students turned instead to the next best thing. Our imaginations! Always a great alternative when things won't quite go your way. Instead of actually planting fruit and vegetables we took on the task of illustrating where some of the fruit and vegetables we've learnt in class would grow if we had the means to grow them.

Now some students took this activity more seriously than others, some intentionally drawing potato trees and mice nibbling at the underground bananas. However it did prove to be a fun and productive activity where we could practise prepositions, our writing skills and fruit and vegetables vocabulary as well as test the students' critical thinking and logical reasoning.

We will be looking to expand our flower pot garden, with lots more surprises to come. Maybe even adding a caramel plant to the collection. Or even the proverbial money tree. What will you be growing in your garden this year?

What can you see from your bedroom window?

            When I asked my younger students “what can you see from your bedroom window?” I got a rather dull and boring answer of “a wall”. One of my students even said that he doesn't have a bedroom. I had to make sure he wasn't Harry Potter! These were not exactly the responses of inspiration and wonder I was hoping for. I couldn't even use the Japanese Alps in view from out of my classroom window as creative inspiration since it was dark. As I wanted my students to transfer their bedroom views onto paper, I realized this was going to be rather an unfruitful activity if we spent the next part of the lesson drawing our neighbour’s walls.

So I took a slightly different approach. Instead of asking “what can you see from your bedroom window?” I asked “what would you like to see from your bedroom window?”. This gave the class the spark I was looking for, giving them the incentive to use their creativity and imagination. The students began to draw the most bizarre and wonderful things you could imagine: from dinosaurs to an octopus climbing Mount Fuji, even the vast expanses of space!

Once our visions of wonder were completed, we learnt how to spell and write all of the marvellous things we had just drawn. This allowed the students to recycle the words they have learnt previously as well as learn how to say some of their favourite things in English! The students took great pride in hanging up their make believe bedroom view around my classroom, boasting to their fellow classmates of all the new exciting words they have learnt.

A fantastic way of engaging the students while giving you the opportunity to learn a little more about them. So the question is; what can YOU see from your bedroom window?

Damian Gowland