Cultural Background

Ask any Filipinos about Pukpuk Palayok or Hampas Palayok, and chances are they played it or saw it played at least once during their childhoods. The game is so immensely popular that any celebration or town fiesta is not complete without children (oh yes, sometimes adults) playing it. Having been colonized by the Spaniards for three hundred and thirty three years, Pukpuk Palayok is the Filipino version of Piñata, and just like the fiesta, Spaniards used the game to attract natives to their ceremonies and convert them to their religion. The Filipinos, known for reinventing things to suit their needs out of limited resources, adapted it by using a clay pot instead of the Mexican painted paper Piñata. In those times paper and paints were scarce and expensive, whereas clay pots were plentiful and cheap.

In the Philippines, pupok means to hit, and palayok is a clay pot, so the game literally means to hit a pot. Traditionally, the game is played with the decorated clay pot filled with goodies (candies, sweets, coins, and sometimes peso bills), suspended by string in the air, high enough for players to reach it. A long bamboo stick is used to hit and break the pot, so that players as well as by-standers can grab as many goodies as they can. The player who breaks the pot wins a prize, usually in currency.

Pukpok Palayok: Reinvented for EFL classrooms

For EFL classrooms, Pukpok Palayok uses no clay pot, nor a bamboo stick. Instead, the game makes use of the white board, picture cards (with magnets attached at the back), and an oversize hat (my children hate to be blindfolded with a handkerchief). In this adaptation, hitting is not permitted; children make use of their sense of directions, understanding of the commands given, and using their hands to feel for the targets. In my experience, the game works wonderfully for preschoolers, for teaching the alphabet, colors, shapes, fruits and vegetables. While, for elementary graders, it works very well for foods, practicing specific target language (“I’m hungry! What do you want? I want a hamburger. Go find it!” or “Where are you going? I’m going to the supermarket. Go find it”).  In addition to the target language, this is a great way to reinforce language for giving directions like; go straight, to your left, to your right, stop, that’s it, etc.

Target Language Examples

S1: I’m hungry!

Class : What do you want?

S1 : I want (hamburgers).

Class: Go find it!

***

Class: What’s for (lunch)?

S2: (Spaghetti) is for lunch.

***

Class : Where are you going?

S3 : I’m going to the (park).

***

Class: How are you going there?

S3 : I’m (riding a bicycle).

Class: Have fun!

Players

Two (2) or more (the more the merrier!)

Materials

picture cards

board

some magnets

a party hat (oversize) or blindfold

How to play

1. Determine the order of play.
2. In random, attach all the picture cards on the board.
3. Instruct the players to remember the placement of each card.
4. The first player takes his turn. He stands 12 steps (more is better) away from the board. The other players ask the question; for example, “What do you want? The first player answers “I want (a hamburger).” The other players answer back “Go, find it!”
5. The first player puts on the over size hat (covering his or her face), and turns around three times.
6. The other players give directions, starting with “Go straight!” “To your right!” “To your left!” etc. The aim is for the player to find the target by following directions given by other players.

Note : For large number of players, for example twenty (20) , it is best to group them into four (4) teams of five members each. One player will have to be blindfolded, while the other four members give the directions to find the target picture card.

Marco Brazil has been training teachers and teaching children English for over fifteen years. He maintains strong a strong commitment to making English fun and easy for both teachers and learners. He occasionally writes articles and gives teaching presentations for Oxford Kid’s Club Teaching Tour mostly, on games (You can see handouts from his workshops here and here).  Marco is the director/owner of SmartKids Circle. You can find Marco on Facebook or follow him on his blog, Mabuhay Classroom.

July 7th is Tanabata, or the Star Festival, in Japan. Legend says that Orihime (a weaver, represented by the  star Vega) and Hikoboshi (a cowherd, represented by the star Altair)  are allowed to cross the Milky Way to meet each year on the seventh evening of the seventh month each year. Children often decorate bamboo branches with colorful origami decorations, and their wishes.

The Star Festival is an easy celebration to adapt in order to include Japanese culture in your English classes. You can pick and choose from among typical Tanabata activities to suit your own goals and the English level of your students. Tanabata includes a story about Vega and Altair, a song about the decorated bamboo branches, and (most importantly) the branches with children’s wishes!

The story

The story of the star-crossed weaver and cowherd can be as simple or complex as you wish. Basically, after Orihime and Hikoboshi fall in love, they’re no longer interested in weaving cloth or herding cows. They’re sent to opposite sides of the Milky Way so that they’ll get back to work. Once a year, however, they’re allowed to cross the Milky Way river to see each other. If it’s raining, the river is too high and they can’t get across. So, many of the wishes tied to the bamboo branches are wishes for clear skies on the night of the 7th.

The Japan Foundation London Language Center has a version of the story suitable for young learner classes. Children can dramatize the story, or draw their own illustrations.

The song

Mama Lisa’s World Blog includes a nice translation of the Japanese song, which I’ve reprinted here:

In Japanese Romaji:

Sasa no ha sara-sara
Nokiba ni yureru
Ohoshi-sama kira-kira
Kingin sunago

In Japanese Text:

笹の葉　さらさら
軒端にゆれる
お星様　キラキラ
金銀砂子

In English:

Bamboo leaves are rustling, rustling,
Swaying close to the roof’s edge,
Oh, how the stars are twinkling, twinkling,
Gold and silver grains of sand.

Students can also write their own lyrics to the song, using vocabulary they know.

The bamboo decorations

Decorating the bamboo branches is always my students’ favorite Tanabata activity.  If bamboo isn’t easy to come by in your country, any type of branch will work as well.

Making the decorations is a great opportunity to review colors and shapes, and to practice following directions (learning how to make the origami shapes). Students typically write their wishes on strips of paper, like I want to be a veterinarian or I hope I pass the entrance exam. This year, my students hadn’t yet learned this language, so we wrote about things they liked instead.

Origami Club has an amazing website with Tanabata decorations. Although the website is in Japanese, it’s very easy to use. Simply click on the picture of the decoration you want to make. On the next page, you’ll see one or two buttons. A yellow/orange button leads to illustrated steps for folding. A blue button leads to an animation of the folding process.

If you’re interested in learning more about Tanabata, Kids Web Japan is a great place to visit. It’s also a great place for children to learn more about Japan.

Happy Tanabata, and I hope all of your wishes come true.

P.S. You can also celebrate Tanabata on August 7th, like some areas in Japan. The August date is closer to the 7th day of the 7th month on the old lunar calendar

I was initially very flattered when Barbara asked me to write a guest post, then my happy feeling turned to mild panic. Finally I just decided to write so here we are. This post is dedicated to one of my favourite ‘props’ for the young learner classroom which are SMALL PLASTIC ANIMALS. I like using a range of props which I keep in brightly coloured bags and clothes hampers.

What do I mean by ‘props’?

In my bag I’ve got a plastic microphone, a squeaky dogs’ toy, an assortment of hats, dressing up clothes, a picture frame, an assortment of different size puppets, fluffy dice, a countdown timer, an assortment of old watches, a blindfold, fly swatters, and a lot of plastic animals. These are just some of the props that I use.

Why do I find props useful?

I find props useful because they:

• help create a positive atmosphere
• focus children’s attention
• provide stimulus for conversation
• provide a focus for students’ thoughts and feelings
• help students express themselves
• stimulate interest
• free up students imagination
• liven up the learning experience and make it more FUN
• activate different senses and brain functions

Six Activities

1. Simple Information Gap Activity

This activity is great for exchanging information about animals and practices reading and speaking skills. I’ve prepared small information cards for some animals that I want my students to learn about.  I put the children in pairs. One child has an information card and the other has a question card. The child with the question card asks the child with the information card the questions on their list and the child with the information card answers. It’s a simple information gap activity which gives controlled practice in exchanging information.

2. Listening Comprehension

Put the children in groups and give each group three plastic animals. The animals do not have to be the same for each group. The teacher writes the name of one of the animals on a piece of paper and puts it face down on her desk. She then begins describing the animal. The children listen and decide which animal it is. After the teacher has modelled the children can take over.

3. True or False – Reading Comprehension

Prepare simple information cards with five random sentences about any animal.

1. They eat meat.
2. They live in the jungle.
3. They’ve got two legs.
4. They can’t swim.
5. They’ve got whiskers.

Put the children into pairs and give them an animal and a True of False card. The children read the sentences and decide if they are true or false for the animal they’ve been given.

4. Interviews 10 Questions Improvisation and Imagination

I love this activity as if gives the children a chance to let their imaginations run wild, or not. Simply ask the children what animal they would like to be and give them a plastic animal. Then in pairs they take turns asking each other questions. I have a list of questions on the wall which helps them if they need support. I really like the freedom it gives them to invent and speak in a much less teacher controlled way. The other day in a class with 11 year olds, there was a monkey who was called Juanita, who lived in the sea, but couldn’t swim and didn’t like bananas but loved pizza.

5. Running listening dictation

Split the class into small groups of three or four students. Give each child a number. When you say one, the children whose number is one, run to the front of the class and you whisper a sentence to them. They have to go back to their group and whisper the sentence to another student who has to write the sentence down. If they can’t remember they come back to the front and the teacher repeats the sentence. When all of the children have had a turn they have to read the sentences in their group and see if they can try and guess the identity of the animal.

1. It’s got four legs.
2. It lives in Africa.
3. It’s got a tail.
4. It’s black and white.

6. Sentence Dash

Split the class into groups of three or four children. Give each group an animal. Tell them that you’ve stuck sentences up around the room. When the teacher blows the whistle the children have to stand up and run around the room collecting as many sentences as possible. When the whistle blows again they have to sit down and count the sentences they have. Then they have to read the sentences as a group and decide whether the sentences describe the animal they have.

All of these activities could be done using flashcards but I use plastic animals because they’re more fun. I once read something about the value of small objects in creating the right atmosphere and mood and I really believe it’s the small things that make the difference. I have nothing against flashcards but plastic animals are magical.

I’ve had the travelling bug since I was a child and have lived and worked in various countries including Thailand, Greece, Austria and the USA. I’m a dip qualified, freelance teacher and trainer here in Spain where I live with my partner, five cats and four dogs. I work as a language assistant in two primary schools during the day and in the afternoon and evening I run teacher training workshops for primary and secondary school teachers and teach one-to-one private classes. I love teaching and living by the beach! You can find me on twitter as Fuertesun or on my blog.

A few weeks ago I was teaching a group of personal and team assistants (PAs) I hadn’t met before how to assist international teams. This group didn’t need to go over critical incidents they’d had with foreign team members. Instead, they said their biggest challenge was making small talk with their visiting American team members. So that’s what we practiced.

Going through standard activities – getting phrases right, extending dialogues, developing initial and follow-up questions, roleplaying first meetings – I noticed that their conversations seemed too artificial to engage anyone. In short, they didn’t know how to get their partners talking.

So I used and adapted a great activity or game developed by Jo Westcombe. She calls it “Flies on the windscreen” and you can read about it here. Jo’s basic idea is that two people are sitting in a car on their way back from the airport, where one has just picked up the other. It’s slightly “surreal”, she says, as cards with small talk topics “hit the windscreen” like so many flies, and the two people must respond to them smoothly.

With these very down-to-earth PAs, who had no trouble speaking but couldn’t get their partner to say anything, I realized it would need to be adapted, and so renamed it “Driver’s seat”. This is based on the concept that the hostess/host should take a proactive role in moving the small talk forward, and discover pleasant areas of common interest to build a friendly, relaxed social relationship on.

This is the  hostess’/host’s brief:

• You’re in the driver’s seat! You’re responsible for keeping the conversation going. Find out what your visitor is really interested in.
• Discover pleasant areas that interest both of you.
• Stick to and share general topics.
• Lead the way with yes/no questions.
• Follow up with more open questions.
• Give tips, but also be authentic.
• Goal: Make it a really good conversation.

This is the visitor’s brief:

• You’re visiting for the first time.
• Your host’s PA is picking you up.
• She may be pleasant and helpful, she may not be.
• Look at the topic cards on the table. Select three that really interest you. Don’t show anyone your cards.
• Don’t introduce these topics, that would be impolite. Wait for your host’s PA to mention them.
• Talk about topics that interest you, politely ignore others.
• Share general topics.
• Goal: Enjoy the ride.

1. Bring or have your group make up cards with a wide range of relatively “safe” topics and a few tricky ones thrown in (politics, religion, health, love). (Click on the link for readymade ones: Small talk topics)

2. Divide the class in two  – drivers and passengers – and give each half their brief to discuss as a group.

3. Spread all of the cards out on a table and let the passengers each pick out 3 cards containing topics that they are truly interested in. These topics must remain secret.

4. Each “driver” then sits next to a “passenger”, and they play driving from the station or airport. They make small talk, from “How was the trip?” on. Pairs work in parallel. Teacher (and perhaps a student assistant) monitors and takes notes of what words the pairs find they lack.

5. Debrief. “What did you learn? What was easy? What was hard? What do you want to work on?”

6. Then switch roles and do it again.

I think this was the most successful activity we did that day. I’ll be doing it again with a new group next week.

I grew up on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, and ‘ran away’ to Germany to study when I was 19. I’d say I’ve gone native here. I’m a freelancer, delivering English and communication skills training to business people and college students, translating, recording audio for several EFL publishers, and writing language exercises for Spotlight Online. My blog, The Island Weekly, keeps me connected to students, friends and teacher colleagues all over the world. I’m involved in my local teachers’ association here in Munich. Our PLN (I’m @annehodg on Twitter)  has been a boon for professional development. When I’m off relaxing, you’ll find me sailing, making music, reading or just plain outdoors.

I teach students between the ages of two- and six-years-old. When you teach young learners you discover how much they love finger plays. The children memorize the English quickly and are able to repeat the words and actions on their own.

Introducing the Finger Play

Finger plays are best used in the classroom with the children watching you and modeling your actions. Try having the children sit in front of you or in a circle. We like to sit on pillows on the floor. You may also want to use a felt board to begin introducing the vocabulary. Put up the characters in the order they will appear in the finger play. Place the name above each character. For example, for the Incy Wincy Spider I put a spider, a water spout, the sun, and the rain. I have the children repeat the words. When possible I also vary the voices for each character. I want the children to visualize the characters in order for them to remember the words that go with that character.

Digitize Your Finger Plays

One way to get the children to memorize the finger plays is to have them practice at home with their parents! You can give the parents hand-outs of the lyrics, but some parents will not know how to perform the hand gestures. Save a few trees and include your finger plays in a wiki. In my English Story Time wiki, I list the lyrics and videos where people show the hand gestures. I try to find the most lively videos with colorful characters.

Try Blabberizing your finger plays. Babblerize is a free Web 2.0 tool that allows you to make the fingers appear like they are speaking. Below I use a drawing, but you can use a picture of one of the student’s hands with finger puppets. You can easily embed the Blabberize video in your wiki so the children can look at them with their parents at home!

Other Creative Ideas

Children love to create! Have the children make finger puppets with ready made templates, old mittens, socks with toes, or with felt. You may also want to purchase a very colorful glove and add googly eyes. Use felt to decorate the characters for each finger play. It is like having costumes for the glove! Each time you do a finger play, pull out the glove and have the children take turns wearing it. They have to sing the words in order to wear the glove!

Have the children draw the characters. Children love to trace their hands or another student’s hands. My students also spell the names of the characters above the fingers. While they draw the characters and spell the words, I play the music. The children always sing the words out loud while they draw.

I have a set of washable crayons and markers. I let the students sometimes draw the characters on my fingers. This activity is so much fun and motivates them to sit down and listen!

What other creative ideas do you have for using finger plays in your classes?

Shelly Sanchez Terrell began teaching inner city children in 1994 in Texas as part of a pantomime and puppetry troop. She later managed hands-on science museum programs for children. In 2000, her nonprofit organization, ETHOS, won the SAMMinistries Volunteer Group of the Year award for their creation of a homeless children’s art and music program. Currently,she is a freelance technology trainer, the VP of Educator Outreach or Parentella.com and an English languge teacher based in Germany. Explore her Teacher Reboot Camp blog for tips on integrating technology effectively into the classroom. She can be reached via Twitter, @shellterrell.

“Flick a card.

Flick a card.

Start the game,

And let’s have fun!”

Siklot: Cultural background

Siklot is one of the most popular traditional games in the Philippines. The game is usually played by children from seven to sixteen years old.  It can be played with two, three, four or more players, indoor or outdoor. I remember having great times playing the game at home with my siblings when I was young.  In those days having a big family was the norm in the Philippines (I have four brothers and a sister), and in those days we didn’t have the technologies that children of today have, so when the weather (the Philippines has only two types of weather; super hot or lots of rain) was non-cooperative for an outdoor adventures, we usually gathered around in one part of the living room and played Siklot.

What is Siklot? Siklot means flick in the Philippines. It is a game similar to jacks or jackstones. The objective of the game is to successfully flick “stones” that are dropped on the floor.  Each player starts with six or more “stones” (but there are variations, children who live along coastal parts of the country prefer sea shells or pebbles, children in rural areas prefer seeds, while children in the cities prefer marbles).

How it is played? After deciding who will begin, the first player collects all the stones from other players. He tosses the stones in the air and catches them with the back of his hand, tosses them again, catching them in the palm of his hand. When stones are on the floor, the player flicks a cue stone (with thumb over the index middle finger) to touch the stones on the ground. Player takes turn flicking pairs of stones until all the stones are gone. The winner of each round is the player who has flicked the most stones. This player sets one stone aside (called a baboy or “pig” to represent traditional Filipino savings) and the game begins again. The player who ends up with the largest number or baboy stones is the ultimate winner.

Siklot: Reinvented for EFL Class

In my experience, Siklot works wonderfully for reinforcing vocabulary and practicing simple questions and answers (what, who, can, how many). Kids may sometimes get too excited and therefore could be a bit noisy, but that’s part of the fun!

.

Players:         2 or more

Materials:     picture cards (playing card size) and a table or flat surface

How to play:

1. Determine the order of play (Rock- Scissors- Paper!).
2. Shuffle the picture cards and deal one to each player (This card will be use to flick cards from the pile, rather than the tradition Siklot stones.)
3. Toss the remaining cards in the air. The cards should land on a flat surface, usually in a pile, but sometimes in two or three broken piles.
4. Players say the chant:  Flick a card. Flick a card. Start the game, and let’s have fun!
   
5. The objective of the game is to flip over a card, away from the pile. Players take turn flicking a card from the pile, in order to turn it face up. If the player is successful, he performs a task (naming the vocabulary or asking another student a question). If he completes the task successfully, he gets to keep the card, and takes another turn. If he fails to flip over a card, the next player takes his turn.
6. Players keep playing until all the cards are gone. The player who has the most cards at the end of the game, wins the game.

Marco Brazil has been training teachers and teaching children English for over fifteen years. He maintains strong a strong commitment to making English fun and easy for both teachers and learners. He occasionally writes articles and gives teaching presentations for Oxford Kid’s Club Teaching Tour mostly, on games (You can see handouts from his workshops here and here).  Marco is the director/owner of SmartKids Circle. You can find Marco on Facebook.

If you missed the first half of this article, start here.

Home Sweet Home

This lesson makes for a fun way of working with language to do with accommodation and living spaces, as the students work together to build a large model house.  The model is then referred to throughout subsequent lessons and forms a focus for discussion.  There are a number of instructions you can find on the internet for making LEGO houses.  Personally, I love this Apple Tree House http://creator.lego.com/en-us/buildinginstructions/default.aspx.  Don’t feel you have to stick rigorously to the instructions, colours and brick choices.  Work with what you have.   In this activity the class build a LEGO house – each group could build a section (such as the roof, garden etc) and then it all gets put together in the centre of the room.

• This can then lead on to discussions of rooms, contents and the layouts of students’ own homes.  You could also try practising model verbs to talk about home safety.

Stop Animation Project

Why not embark on a project over the course of a few lessons or the term in which the finished product is a stop animation film made out of LEGO?  There are number of videos such as the famous ‘Starwars’ and ‘Indiana Jones’ clips to inspire you at http://www.brickfilms.com/.  The site also has references for audio, video and lighting advice.

• Such a project could incorporate a number of smaller language projects which all contribute to the final film.  Consider the script, brainstorming and coming up with the scenery, music and lyrics.  Perhaps write biogs for your characters.  Have a movie website so that students’ work is somewhere in the public domain and the film (however short) takes on a momentum of its own.
• Your final version can be posted on You Tube and at http://www.brickfilms.com/ for the enjoyment of fellow LEGO fans.  Seeing their work online is very encouraging for the students.  I would recommend moderating comments and posts on You Tube so as to avoid undesirable feedback.
• As usual, care should always be taken when working with minors and the internet, and it would be parental consent should be sought before posting your students’ work online.

LEGO Cuisenaire Rods

Although I feel that The Silent Way goes against many of my communicative language principles, I cannot help but be fascinated by the use of little coloured Cuisenaire Rods and I don’t need convincing that they have their justified place in some classrooms.  In my world, I use LEGO bricks to fulfil a similar function.  I believe that LEGO has the advantage of being familiar in many of our learners’ hands, which I hope goes some way to enhancing their learning experience and the cognitive benefits of some of the activities below.

• Syntax:  Give the student a number of sample sentences and ask them to recreate them using LEGO bricks.  In this case, the bricks take on a syntactic role and can help learners identify lexical patterns or rules of word order.  I’ve included below an example of how I used this recently with a French adult student.  She was struggling with the position of adverbs in English sentences:

The visualisation of the blocks of colour helped her, she said, to remember how the typical English pattern differed from her L1 and served to illustrate syntactical function in very visual way.

• Working with beginner-level students, LEGO can be used to introduce numbers, colours and shapes.  Of course you can work with the actual properties of the individual bricks but also put bricks together to make other shapes and combinations.
• Use LEGO to help practice spatial language areas such as prepositions (e.g. the red brick is on top of the blue brick) and comparatives (e.g. the white brick is bigger than the others).
• Use the bricks to help students visualise verb-noun collocations (one yellow brick and one pink brick) or adjective-noun collocations (one blue brick and one pink brick).  Enlarge a copy of the class text, put it on the floor and ask students to place bricks under the collocations.  The colours are important here and should be kept consistent from one lesson to another, so that when recalling the vocabulary, students ‘see’ the frequent colours in their minds.
• In a similar way to Cuisenaire Rods, LEGO can help with the visualisation of weak and strong sentence stress.  Students can for example look at the ways that changing sentence stress affects meaning.  I’ve given an example below of how I use this technique (with a very true ‘if clause’ sentence!).

• Or word stress:

There are many, many more ways to bring LEGO bricks to life in the classroom and this selection above is in no way exhaustive.   For me, this post will have been a success if it results in more bricks being set free into learners’ hands around the world, to do what they do best – inspire creativity, stimulate learning and bring about smiles.

Please leave your feedback on any of the activities I’ve posted, but also do suggest your own LEGO brick lesson.  To inspire you, I have a set of 100 LEGO bricks to give away to the person with the best LEGO lesson idea!  So to end, I leave you with the LEGO Company’s own statement:  Play On…

Further resources:

Ebay – great for cheap LEGO sets and bags of bricks

Freecycle/Freegle – a set of Yahoo Groups ordered by location where people can give away or request things.  People are often giving away toys.

Charity shops/Thrift stores – always good for a bargain and LEGO bricks often lurk in the toy section – go on, you have my permission to rummage!

I live in the UK, about 20 miles from London, with my little companion Thomas, aged four.  I teach English to all kinds of people.  Business professionals who are learning English for work, teenagers from abroad who have relocated here with their parents, students who moved to the UK for a few months, fell in love, and now need the language to live and argue with their new husband/wife. There are so many stories, no two students, or their English needs seem to be the same.  That is why I love what I do.

Some other things you might care to know about me…

-      I drink far too much coffee for my own good and frequent coffee shops on a regular basis.

-      I own five pairs of red shoes.

-      I knit a mean tea cosy.

-      I am terrified of bugs/mini beasts of any kind

-      Thomas and I love doing Origami (or Mr Garmi as he calls it)

-      Worst job I ever had was cleaning toilets in an old people’s home – I think ELT is a little better!

-      My Twitter ID is @EHerrod.

Firstly, I’d like to put this post into some sort of context.  In 2002, I landed a dream job (at the time) working at the LEGO Company.  The next five years were so much fun and those little coloured bricks became part of my everyday life.  Now I feel I need to give the studded plastic something back and perhaps offer them another raison d’etre.  At the LEGO Company, when I attended any kind of meeting, there was, 99% of the time, a bowl of LEGO bricks on the table. They weren’t just decoration – they were to be fiddled with – and I defy anyone not to feel the tension drop in their shoulders and the inner child not to emerge when given the green light to tinker with those little blocks of primary-coloured plastic during a business meeting.  ‘LEGO’ by the way is not a typo, but brand requirement in any written reference to the toy and yes, I was brainwashed by a zealous marketing department.

So, this guest post is me attempting to give something back to a toy that gave me so much pleasure as a child, and as a working adult. It is not something I am doing for the sake of a whacky post. In a cynically corporate world, LEGO remains a family business with a genuine set of wholesome values that runs through its core.  The company began in the 1930s with a 17 year old Danish boy, Ole Kirk Christiansen, carving wooden toys.  The word ‘LEGO’ itself comes from two Danish words ”LEg GOdt” meaning “play well”.   Over the years it has become a huge brand with worldwide appeal and has the well-earned status of “Toy of the Century” (Fortune Magazine and the British Association of Toy Retailers). It has, I believe, a unique ability in today’s toy market, to transcend age, language and gender barriers and encourage a therapeutic feeling of familiarity and comfort in adults and children alike.  So given the smiles it so often brings in our hands, why not bring some brick-shaped joy into the ELT classroom?

So without further ado, here are my five suggestions of things to do with LEGO in the ELT classroom.  By the way, for some of these activities, it may be worth checking whether any of your students suffer from colour blindness.

LEGO Running ‘Bricktation’

This activity works in a very similar way to the well-know ‘running dictation’ ELT activity.   However, rather than a text pinned up on the wall, students refer to a picture of a LEGO model from a set of building instructions.

For some model pictures ideal for this activity, you can visit the LEGO Instructions Site at http://us.service.lego.com/en-US/BuildingInstructions/default.aspx.  Filter under the “Select a Brand” drop-down box for “Creative Building System” (LEGO Creative being the sets that come unthemed – they are often sold as a box of bricks with an Ideas Book).  Choose one of the Ideas Book pdf files.  The models in these pamphlets are usually of a good size and difficulty for this task.

This activity is aimed at encouraging good verbal communication and looking at some of the language needed to give clear instructions and make suggestions.

• Divide the class into teams.  It doesn’t matter how many people in each team as students can take it in turns to be the runner if necessary.  If the class is small, this activity can also be in pairs with one person the builder and the other the runner.  I have found however that the energy is far greater, the more people on each team.
• Give each team a box of LEGO, ensuring obviously that each box contains the necessary bricks needed to build the model (don’t laugh – I’ve not checked before and it’s a disaster!).
• Pin the picture of the finished model to the wall or outside the classroom in the corridor.
• Each team selects a builder and the first runner and off they go!
• Each runner heads to the instructions memorises a section and returns to the builder with the next set of verbal instructions on how to put the model together.
• The teacher observes, collecting language, focussing on good examples and instances which need refining.  You could choose to focus on a particular language point such as imperatives or questions forms and then look at how the successful teams functioned as a group.
• At the end of the activity look at how each group’s model compares to the one on the wall.

Writing instructions activity

Students begin by building a model together as a class.  In teams, they then build their own model and write out instructions so other teams can try and replicate it.  The idea here is to develop the skill of writing concise instructions and working together with other students towards a common objective.

• The task begins with the class helping to build a larger model together.  Distribute the bricks needed randomly around the class so that each student has a few.  Show the written instructions on the board and invite students to put the model together as a class.  With the instructions on the board, this stage exposes the students to some of the language they will need to perform the writing task later on in the lesson.
• After the class model is completed, the teacher gives students boxes of LEGO with assorted bricks in.
• In pairs, students build a model of something.  They can let their imaginations run wild here!
• The teacher goes around the room, observing and helping with language between the pairs if necessary.
• When students have finished their models, students then write up instructions on how to build their models.
• While students are writing up their instructions, the teacher takes a quick photo of each of the finished models.
• Students dismantle the models and hand in their box and instructions to the teacher.
• The teacher then redistributes the boxes to different pairs.
• With their new box and set of instructions, students set about building the models designed by the other teams.
• While students are building their new models, the teacher will need to hook up the camera to the IWB/PC and upload the model pictures. When everyone is finished, the final models are compared with what they should look like.
• It’s nice at this point too if students can give feedback on how easy the instructions were to follow.  Did they have any difficulties?  What differences are their between the original design and their attempt?

Be sure to check back tomorrow for more great teaching ideas with LEGO®!

I live in the UK, about 20 miles from London, with my little companion Thomas, aged four.  I teach English to all kinds of people.  Business professionals who are learning English for work, teenagers from abroad who have relocated here with their parents, students who moved to the UK for a few months, fell in love, and now need the language to live and argue with their new husband/wife. There are so many stories, no two students, or their English needs seem to be the same.  That is why I love what I do.

Some other things you might care to know about me…

-     I drink far too much coffee for my own good and frequent coffee shops on a regular basis.

-      I own five pairs of red shoes.

-      I knit a mean tea cosy.

-      I am terrified of bugs/mini beasts of any kind

-      Thomas and I love doing Origami (or Mr Garmi as he calls it)

-      Worst job I ever had was cleaning toilets in an old people’s home – I think ELT is a little better!

-      My Twitter ID is @EHerrod

Is this what Internet access looks like at your school?

Some time back, Anita Kwiatkowska encouraged me to start a new series. I’ve actually been thinking of this idea for a few months, when OUP asked me to do a series of presentations about using technology in teaching young EFL learners.

It was a challenge for two reasons. First,  I’m not the most tech-savvy teacher in cyberspace. Second, most of the classrooms I visit don’t have access to the Internet, or even computers. A DVD player is still considered quite “high tech” in many public schools and private language schools. However, most teachers I meet want to incorporate technology tools in their teaching, and they do have Internet access at home.

So this is the challenge I’m setting for myself (and future guest authors) in this series–How can we take high tech tools and make them work in low tech classrooms? How can teachers, perhaps with a computer and Internet at home, take advantage of the tools that are available online?

Voicethread is a great example to start off this series.

If you aren’t familiar with VoiceThread, it’s advertised as a collaborative, multimedia slide show. Like most web tools, it has free and paid account levels. I’ll use two examples of student projects to show how this can be incorporated into even the most low tech classrooms.

Students in my kids’ class are learning the alphabet. After learning each set of letters, they enjoy making “human” letters. Aside from being a silly, fun break after learning shapes, names, and sounds, this activity helps them internalize the essential shapes of letters. This year, I’ve taken pictures in class and then uploaded the pictures to VoiceThread. I record their words for each letter sound using Audacity (another free tool that allows you to record and edit audio on your computer) and a microphone attached to my laptop. At home, I add their recorded voices to the alphabet book.

Because VoiceThread is collaborative, anyone can add words or comments to my students’ book. I can export a video of our book, with comments, to bring back into class so we can listen to the additions and see how the book has grown. When we reach the letter Z, I’ll burn the book onto CDs for each of my students, so they’ll have a personal copy of their project.

So, how does this VoiceThread alphabet book improve on what I can already do in class without technology?

1-Because of a generous network of teachers on Twitter, my students have a chance to hear English spoken in a lot of different accents, by people who speak English as a first language and by people for whom English is an additional language.

2-They’re learning about countries as we see where our comments come from.

3-They have an invaluable connection with a group of students in New Jersey, who are also learning their letters and sounds, thanks to the efforts of Kim George. My students are mighty impressed with how many words Kim’s students know for each letter! (In fact, you may want to fast forward through a few of the alphabet letters when you check out the project–it has really grown since our first letters!)

4-Since the book is web-based, other classes around the world can “read” our book and it can continue to grow.

My adult learners created another picture book using VoiceThread. For this project, I printed out pictures of a cat I found on Morgue File (a free photo site). I took these into class and had my students write captions for the photos. Then, they discussed and negotiated the order of the pictures to create a story. Some photos were deleted, and some captions were revised to fit their evolving ideas. I added the captions to the photos at home using Gimp (a free photo editing tool) and uploaded them to VoiceThread. I was able to export the picture book as a video so I could take it back into class. VoiceThread projects can also be downloaded to mobile phones, which is useful since that’s the way most of my adult learners access the internet.

How does this digital book improve on what I could do otherwise?

1-It gave my students a clear, real reason to use English. It also gave them a real audience to write for. They had something to show for their hard work, something they could share with their friends and grandchildren.

2-My students have a chance to interact with other students through comments. I embedded their project on My Corner of the World (my student blog). While they haven’t yet mastered the art of responding to comments (a few are still figuring out where they might find their email addresses ), they do enjoy reading comments from others.

3-Since it’s web-based, I can share a link with the parents of my young learners class, and they can read the book at home. In fact, anyone around the world can read the book.

VoiceThread is one of my favorite high tech tools for low tech classrooms. I have a few more ideas, but am more excited to hear from other teachers. How have you adapted tech tools for classrooms that don’t have much technology to work with?

Last November, Carolyn Graham did a workshop at the JALT National Conference in Shizuoka, Japan, on how to make a Jazz Chant. I taped her workshop, and with her permission am sharing the part of it where she demonstrates her technique.

One of the many things I love about Carolyn is that she spends most of her time giving away her secrets. In this short video, Carolyn shows teachers how easy it is for them to create their own chants to reinforce vocabulary or grammar.

Knowing how to put together a quick chant can be a lifesaver—for the last five minutes of class, to calm an unruly group of kids, or to put the class reins into your students’ hands and have them create their own chants. The possibilities are endless, and I think this is one of the reasons Carolyn’s technique has survived all of the methodological twists and turns in our profession in the past 30 years. (The first Jazz Chant book was published in 1978.)

How to Make A Jazz Chant by Carolyn Graham from Barbara Sakamoto on Vimeo.

Hints for creating your own Jazz Chant (from the video):

1) Choose a topic of interest to your students.

2) Use “real” language that’s useful and appropriate for the age of your students. (“What’s your name?” is real language. “What is your name?” is not real language, because no one really talks like this.)

3. For a vocabulary chant, choose 3 vocabulary words–a 2-syllable word, a 3-syllable word, and a 1-syllable word and put them together with a bit of repetition:

Baseball, basketball, golf.

Baseball, basketball, golf.

Baseball, basketball, baseball, basketball

Baseball, basketball, golf.

4. To reinforce grammar, add a pattern:

He plays baseball.

She plays basketball.

They play golf.

They play golf.

5. Have fun and don’t be afraid to play with language!

If you want to read more about Carolyn’s long history with Jazz Chants, Celebrating 25 years of Jazz Chants is an excellent overview (from 2006). Two other blog posts that you might enjoy are J is for Jazz Chants on Carol Read’s blog and Jason Renshaw’s report after attending one of Carolyn’s workshops on English Raven.

Disclaimer: Carolyn Graham is one of my co-authors on Let’s Go (Oxford University Press) so I’ve had the excellent fortune to work with her for a long time. Even if I didn’t have a front row seat to her magic, I would still adore her for both her chants and her efforts working with teachers and charities around the world. She’s one of my heroes.

Just for fun, I searched for Carolyn on YouTube, and came across this video of children in Osaka singing The Hello Song from Let’s Go 1. They were so cute, I thought I’d include their video with this post