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.

If you missed the first part of this article, start here

Previously, I outlined how much I’d been changed as a teacher by the realization that language students would benefit from a lot of the instructional practices of “special” needs teachers. Accommodations and modifications of content, behavior, use of models, explicit teaching of learning strategies, small class size, differentiation and what I’d like to talk about today – “repetition”.

To begin, see an example HERE. I’ve been cheerleading Gary Bishop’s amazing Tarheel Reader for a long time. Developed for students with learning disabilities, it is outstanding for ELLs. Why? Because of the intense use of repetition.

Repetition is needed to learn a language and it is a basic remedial technique. Language is NOT a knowledge laden subject but is performance based. We have to do things over and over, listen over and over to achieve mastery. Just like driving a car or learning to pack a parachute. As a child, that’s how we learn too. Here’s a photo of the math notebook of the amazing mathematician, Kurt Godel. Look familiar? Even Godel had to master the basics and we should be doing this with our students. [as an aside, I really do hope one day to write about the implications of his incompleteness theorem to language - it is fascinating ] I’m sure you remember lots of this in your younger days, lots of copying and “mastering”.

But I’m not advocating that teachers set up classrooms like this infamous Chinese way…. full of parroting and useless repetition. No. There are better ways to do this and here are a few of my ideas on how you can best make “repetition” part of your instructional toolkit.

On the Lesson Level

1. Chants and Drills. Yes, don’t do them a lot but do them! The key is to make them so the students have some freedom and personal input. Always allow for students to change the words or omit words (substitution).

2. Controlled Practice. This is a standard lesson component and should allow students to repeat basic grammatical structures yet “push in” new content. Make sure the structure is always on the board for reference and get students used to repeating it (by rewarding them, ringing a bell etc..). Example. “Yesterday, I went to the ………. and ……….. ” – that’s the target language for use with a set of flashcards of places and things.

3. Repeat student’s phrases often in class. We call this echoing. It allows other students to hear the language again but also gives students a chance to process the language and repeat inside their own heads.

Teacher: “What did you do yesterday Mirka?”
Students: “I went to the mall”.
Teacher: “Oh, you went to the mall!”

Even better if the teacher doesn’t repeat but another student does. Recycle the language during the lesson. For example, in the above exchange, the teacher could ask other students – “What did Mirka do?”
Disappearing dialogs are also a great way to repeat language!

4. Review! Every lesson should at least end with the question – “What did we learn today?” Then, list the vocabulary, structures, ideas covered. Even better if you have time to end in a game, quiz. Even better if the students make the review questions! You could also make it standard to review the previous lesson at the beginning of the next.

5. Lesson Sequencing. Students really, really need to know what will happen each class. Make an agenda and stick to it! Meaning, every class, the students know what will happen the first 5 min. / the next 10 min. etc…. You do the same things EVERY class but with different content. I really, truly think there is too much variety and too much “different” coming at students in our English language classrooms. A predictable lesson sequence is vital and students need this kind of “repetition”. An example lesson sequencing might go like this.

0-5 min: Chit – chat, check student attendance, problems…
5-15 min. Review of the previous lesson.
15-25 min. Elicit background knowledge: Song and brainstorm
25-40 min. Controlled practice activity: Flashcards
40-60 min. Performance, presentation using target language.

On the Curriculum Level.

1. Recycling. Recycling of content or “spiraling”  is done by textbook writers but it isn’t always done well. Teachers need to be aware of the need to recycle into new units, the grammar, vocabulary and functions previously covered. Students need to encounter them in new situations, in order to master them.  Jerome Bruner first outlined these curriculum and constructivist principles and his thoughts are very pertinent to ELT.

So for example if the previous unit was about “Telling the time”. In the next unit, “Shopping”, the teacher should make sure to use a lot of “time” references and prepare lessons which insert this. Thus, the dialogue from the textbook could be changed to include times about meeting/opening/closing of shops.
____________________________________

I know I’ve just touched on a few of the ways you can “repeat” and get your students learning more effectively. I think it an important thing for every teacher to think about and this summer might just be the time for such reflection.

David Deubelbeiss is an EFL teacher and teacher trainer living in Seoul, Korea. He runs a social network for teachers called EFL Classroom 2.0 and a website of teacher-submitted teaching ideas called Teaching Recipes. You can also follow David on his blog, Teacher Talk and on Twitter.

While trying to have a quick nap on a hot Friday afternoon in Southern Spain, I started thinking of what to write about for this guest post. Two ideas came to me – the first being the use of puppets in the early learner classroom, and the other being how to successfully teach teenagers. I’ve decided to leave the puppet post for my own blog sometime soon, and to write here about teaching teenagers.

In most ELT situations, a teacher will more often than not end up having to teach teenagers at some point. In private institutions, children are the most lucrative students, starting when they are young and hopefully (from the teacher’s and owner’s point of view – even if their reasons are different) continuing at least until they go to university.

However, for many teachers this age group is the bane of their career. It can be incredibly difficult to create a positive learning environment in which adolescents feel happy, secure, valued and motivated to learn. The reasons for this are many: teenagers are going through many physical and emotional changes, including changes in their brains (see Naomi Moir’s post on the OUP blog; they would normally prefer to be somewhere else on a sunny afternoon; if they do want to come to class it may be because it is where the rest of their friends are, as a kind of social club; peer pressure is at its highest and this can have a very negative effect during a lesson; and they may even be suffering from stress and exhaustion due to their demanding school and after school commitments.  These are just a few of the reasons why it can be extremely difficult to provide successful lessons and courses with this age group.

I have taught a fantastic group of teenagers over the past two years, and I think it will be useful to look at aspects of our teacher-student relationship to see why in this particular case, the course has been successful.

The First Day

The first few days are crucial to the way the course will run.  The students will make unconscious decisions during this time about what kind of teacher you are and it is essential to let them know that while you may be relaxed and friendly, you will not accept any nonsense. With an exam course like the one I have been teaching, I spend a large part of the first lesson explaining what will be expected of them during the next two years. I make sure they are conscious of the amount of work they will be doing both in and out of class and how important the pace of the course is, if they want to reach their objectives (in this case, passing the exam).

You may hear lots of moans when you make it clear that they are going to have to work hard, but generally I find that most teenagers expect to have to put in a bit of effort, and this usually motivates them. It is really important that they are motivated, especially if it is a two year course.

Good Cop Vs Bad Cop

I consider myself to be quite strict with teenage exam prep groups, and contrary to popular belief, research has shown that firm but fair teachers are preferred by this age group. Although you may be tempted to treat a group of sixteen year olds as adults, the fact is that emotionally they are not. Even though they may look like adults and demand to be treated like one, they don’t usually have the emotional balance and reason that an adult usually has. This means that if you do talk to them as if they were your friends or peers, they will often use this as an excuse not to study or do as you ask. At the end of the day, most teenagers don’t have the maturity to choose progress over fun and games, and you will find it much more difficult to get them to put in the required effort.

However, this doesn’t mean that you have to bear the stick constantly – give them a carrot when they have been working hard! The idea is you are seen to be in control of the class – something that teenagers consider a quality of a good teacher. Rewards such as games and other fun activities can be a great incentive to get the work done. Do make sure though, that you do give them the rewards you promise, otherwise they will just think that there is no point in doing the work.

Short-Term Goals

For you the school year may fly by and as soon as you know it, June is here again. For the average fifteen year old though, a year can be a very long time. In a two-year course such as the one I’ve been teaching, you need to provide students with plenty of goals to work towards during the course. Trying to get students to study for an exam that they will sit in two year’s time is almost impossible. Even if you constantly remind them of the exam, they will not see it as something realistic until about three months before. This means that you must set them regular goals that they can achieve in order to keep motivation as high as possible. You can discuss and negotiate these goals with your students, keeping them involved.

Motivation

One of the questions constantly posed by teachers of teenagers is “How can I motivate them? They aren’t interested in anything!” If you ask a group of teenagers what topics they would like to cover in class, they will come up with very few. Even if you do bring in some materials you have found about their interests, you will inevitably find that they show the same amount of enthusiasm as if they were the typical course book unit about the environment. The problem, I find is not the actual topic of the lesson, but the type of activities involved. Most course book pre-reading tasks for example, do not make you want to read! Trying to get a learner to read through a gapped text before attempting to fill in the gaps is a nightmare, usually because the text is about something not at all interesting and the student has no incentive to read. Imagine you have a text about someone who survived a shark bite. Instead of just asking your students to read, tell them the story from the survivor’s point of view from the beginning, but stopping before the end. Now ask what happened next, encouraging all kinds of funny or even gory answers, and then get them reading! The main thing is, unless you want to spend hours before every lesson trying to find interesting teenage material and planning lessons, to find fun ways to exploit the materials they already have in their course books.

Humour

One of the reasons why I have enjoyed teaching this particular group of teens is that we have had some brilliant moments of laughter. Sometimes I have been the instigator and sometimes they have. Although I have made the students work really hard and cover as much as possible every lesson, a good laugh now and again can motivate teenagers to want to come to class. I started this by making up stories, usually to introduce some grammar point, that they actually believed (like having sprained my ankle – lots of limping around the classroom), and then got a bit of a reputation as a fibber! However, this gave me and the students an opportunity to relax. When they saw that I was prepared to joke with them, they were much happier about working. They would themselves decide to work hard so that later they could have a bit of a laugh. I had the odd trick played on me (in a nice way) that had me crying with laughter.

I do believe that teenage groups can be the most rewarding. When you see how much progress they have made, when they have become more responsible for their own learning, how they have grown up and when you and they both feel sad on the last day of the year because you won’t see each other for three months, then it is really worth it.

I have been teaching English for over ten years, mostly in Spain. For the past eight years I have been living and teaching in Jerez de la Frontera, Cadiz. I love teaching children and I have a blog mostly devoted to Young Learner related issues and activities called So This Is English and you can find me on Twitter as @michelleworgan.

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