The calm down chair… For the teacher

There are several theories on how to maintain order and discipline in a class of more than 1 student / child. A well-known tool is the time out, a method which nowadays is generating many debates between parents and teachers.

The Time out is a behavioral discipline tool (Pavlov's dogs and Skinner's pigeons, just to be clear), which consists of isolating the child who behaves badly and leaving him a few minutes to, supposedly, think and reflect on what he has done 'wrong'. In the classroom, time out can be translated with the use of a chair (the thinking chair) placed in an isolated corner while at home it can coincide with the option of leaving the child alone in his room for a certain time.

People who are against this measure provide reasons I'd take into account since they claim that this type of solution communicates to the child something like 'every time you make a mistake, you will be rejected and you will have to deal with your emotions by yourself.
'
Now, when you only have 1 child or 2, it may be worthwhile to look for more sensitive and constructive alternatives to solve behavioral issues, however it is clear that in a class of at least 25 students, only 1 child who does not behave properly  can likely generate endless of difficult to manage problems, especially when you have a schedule to accomplish and no time to waste. Having to choose between giving a class or adequately attend to the emotional storms of your students is an undesirable situation and we often tend to opt for the quickest and most effective solution in terms of time and effort.

Anyway, all this reflection to actually tell you that I had a difficult month because of some discipline problems in my classes of 5 years, and, check this out, I only have 7 students. So the other day, after weeks of reflections and useless attempts to solve the situation, reluctantly, I informed the principal that I was going to take a chair down to the class: the thinking chair, too bad! And she told me "Ah, the calm down chair!" And I, who had already accumulated enough stress, I joked, "Yes, the calm down chair for the teacher!"

That very same moment an alternative to the thinking chair came to my mind: I decided that I was not going to force any child to sit on the wicked chair, quite the opposite, I was going to sit on it, myself. I was going to sit there and count up to 3 every time I'd noticed an inappropriate behavior going on for too long: at my 3 everyone had to stay 'quiet and still', in order not to lose any of their 3 points and, therefore, the sticker that I usually let them choose at the end of each class.

I explained everything to them at the beginning of the lesson, showing them the sign where I had written their names and finally we rehearsed it.

I'm pretty sure they took it as one more game (probably the musical statues) and it was much simpler to maintain the control of the class, without stress. Moreover, I have the impression that we all won, because on the one hand I saved a lot of energy, while on the other hand the children, although they had the chance to jump and run (being children, in the end), they were not scolded or punished since at my 3 they were all sitting around me ready to listen to the instructions of the next activity. By making them see clearly the consequences of their actions, keeping the sign with the points and their names in sight all the time, they could actively take their behavior under control.

It was a very profitable and fun class for everyone, all the time and, above all, to prepare the necessary material was not very elaborate since the sign is a laminated A4 white sheet of paper where you can write and erase names and points with markers for whiteboard.

Have a happy and relaxing Easter break!





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More about Easter and Spring

European Countries and Their Capital Cities - Social science

Hi there! Today's post is about how I managed to help my students learn about European countries and their respective capital cities (in English) in a very pleasant and effective way. I imagine that you can use this same method for any list of countries you'd like your students to know.

The most complicated part of this task is that it's totally abstract and quite far from the everyday life of our 8-year-old students. In addition, knowing the capitals (in this case in English) also means knowing the name of the country (also in English) where each one is located and, if that was not enough, it also means being able to locate them on a blank political map. For a student's point of view, studying for this exam can turn into an exhausting and very uninteresting job or, to be quite frank, into a torture.

As usual, the first thing I looked for was a catchy song that mentioned most of states we needed to learn: The Europe Map Song (Obertopian).
 

In this phase the trick isn't to learn the song by heart; instead, while the music is playing, the child should try to identify the mentioned nations on the blank map by pointing to them with their fingers, as if they were playing the piano: this way they are almost working with all their senses - through the coordination between hearing, sight and touch - which generates a deeper learning. In fact, this coordination allows the brain to establish connections, or synapses, between its neurons, according to Neuroscience and as Maria Montessori intuited*, and, at the same time, we are creating a 'muscular memory' too (actually it is a process known as myelination of the neural pathways that gives athletes and artists the advantage thanks to faster and more efficient neural pathways): the more we practice, the faster and better we solve the task.


Usually children find this exercise pretty entertaining and consequently, just by listening to our song a few times, the location of the different countries on the map was quickly under control, and therefore we could move to phase 2: the capitals (!!!!)

In this second phase we prepared a bingo: first we divided Europe into different areas: we had the English-speaking islands, the Mediterranean area, Central Europe, Eastern Europe and Northern Europe (better known among kids as FROZEN Land ahahhaha). Then we associate a color to each area and we made some little flags - with post-its and toothpicks, as you can see in the photo - where we wrote the names of the capital cities. Then we prepared some plasticine pedestals where we could pin the little flags as they were being taken out from a container and finally we could play our homemade Capitals of Europe bingo!

* Maria Montessori designed sandpaper letters in order to allow the child to "play" the sound - by tracing the letters with his index finger first and with a stick, as big as a pencil, later - and build a muscular memory of the shape of the letter that one day he will write.

Natural Science: The Life Cycle of a Dandelion and The Erbarium

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Flashcards, because my child doesn't repeat

Hello everyone! Back in the saddle, finally!

I was about to write a post about Social Science - The Capitals of Europe, but I've just found these search terms - in the headline - in the statistics of my Spanish blog, mihijohablaingles.com, so I decided that maybe it's worth giving you some guidelines to solve this little inconvenience: MY CHILD DOES NOT REPEAT.

The first step, as always, is to find out the reasons why your children refuse to repeat the words in English (or any other language you're trying to teach them). Generally speaking, it may depend on shyness, shame, insecurity, frustration caused by a negative event which may have occurred in relation to this type of request or you're just dealing with children who simply don't like to be corrected because they are very competitive and associate the word 'mistake' to 'failure'.

Solution? GAMES

Games where, in order to win, you have to repeat words, read them out loud, say short sentences, ask simple questions, etc. We repeat the word aloud (or only the first syllable when we perceive that they can complete the word on their own) and let our children / students say or repeat them. If we realize that their way of pronouncing it is not appropriate, we repeat it ourselves, again, pronouncing it correctly, without making them notice the mistake. Why? Simply because if the child likes the game, he will want to play it again (and again) and that will give us the opportunity to practice the same words several times, thus he'll be able to learn new vocabulary and its correct pronunciation without pressure. Easy peasy.

While children are playing games they are learning in an informal way and they always want to win, so, while they're playing, they forget their inhibitions, concentrate and try to do their best. Playing games is a powerful tool in the teaching - learning process.

Once they have acquired more self-confidence, being introduced to new contents to play with will be perceived as a natural process.

Which games should we propose to the youngest? In the beginning, we should use very simple games like a Memory or a Bingo and later a Go Fish in order to introduce grammatical structures we want them to learn.

I hope you'll find this post useful and that you'll enjoy playing games and practicing  English together with your children.

More play ideas for children

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Teaching HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?

03/10/2013

Five years ago I bought this little book to teach the expression: 

How long does it take to do something? 

It takes…

The book is definitely focused on children's everyday life and suggests them to consider the amount of time they need to do things like zipping up a jacket, going to school by bike, filling in a bucket with sand, taking their shoes off, washing the dog etc.

My students find it quite entertaining, so I wanted to keep thinking about time. I came out with these actions that anybody can time inside any classroom:

- How long does it take to jump 20 times?

- How long does it take to say the English alphabet?

- How long does it take to say "I can speak English" 10 times?

- How long does it take to pile up all your books?

- How long does it take to take everything out of your schoolbag and then put it back in?  

I'm sure you can think about many other enjoyable things to do and time.

Let the children write down the questions and the answers, it'll help consolidate them in their minds.

Finally encourage them to think of their own.

Have fun!

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Rhyme Robber: the game that helps children improve their listening skills

Today I'm going to tell you about one of my favorite board games: Rhyme Robber.It's produced by Orchard Toys, the British company I mentioned in a previous post,  and it's a perfect filler for these last hot days of school.

The most remarkable ESL purpose of this game is to develop listening skills at a very young age through sound recognition and rhyming skills, which, as I already wrote here, are crucial in order to build effective communication skills as adults.

In the game box you'll find 4 rhyme robber boards showing a child with a robber's swag bag (1 for each player), 48 rhyme cards and a rhyme guide board, where all the pictures and their respective words are grouped by rhyming sounds and colors.

Each player is given two cards, which they hold in their hands without showing to anybody else, then 4 more cards are placed face up in the centre of the table, while the rest of the cards are left face down in a pile next to these.

The youngest player starts and if they are holding a card that rhymes with one of the four cards in the centre of the table, then they can take the matching card while saying, for example, 'rake rhymes with lake', and put both cards face up on top of their robber board in their character's swag bag. If the next player has in their hand a card that matches a card on another player's board, they can choose to take that one, instead of one from the centre of the table. In any case once a player puts down a card, they have to take another one from the pile so that they are always holding two cards. The game ends  when all 48 cards have been stolen or no more cards can be stolen.
 
The game is especially effective with preschoolers and first graders straight out of the box: you'll only have to be there to read the names under the pictures out loud to help children recognize the rhyming sounds. Very small kids won't love the fact that other players can steal their cards so I'd suggest not insisting that they follow that rule, especially since we should focus on the development of listening skills more than anything else.
 
Once I noticed that older kids have stronger rhyming skills I suggested an extension of the game: through reading rhyming books I encouraged my students to look for new rhyming word families which they would then copy onto paper, cut out in circles, and added to the basic game in order to make it last longer.

My students' favorite books are ones written by Dr Seuss, the author of Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, The Lorax, Horton Hears a Who! and many more, as well as others by Julia Donaldson such as The Gruffalo, What the Ladybird Heard, Room on the Broom, The Snail and the Whale,  A Squash and a Squeeze among others.

Click on the links to Orchard Toys, Seussville and Julia Donaldson websites to entertain your childish soul as much as it needs :)

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Nancie Atwell's tips on how to hook your students up with literature

I've recently found the perfect excuse to devote some precious time to reading "The Reading Zone", by Nancie Atwell, who happens to be the first teacher to win The Global Teacher Prize, just in case you're not familiar with her name.

In fact, since I had to design a blog for didactic purpose as part of a a university assignment for my ICT class, I decided to be a little bit more innovative and creative by giving an old project of mine another chance: The Reading Club (version 2.0 in this case). It was originally designed for Spanish children and Spanish children's literature, but you can definitely make it work for your own students and whatever language you'd like them to improve. 

So let's take a closer look at Nancie Atwell and her book. First of all, I'd like to clarify what "The Reading Zone" means: it's the place readers go when they leave our classroom behind and live vicariously in their books (Chapter 2, page 21). It's comparable to a 'private internal movie, but better,'  as I also described it in this post.

This state of mind is possible only if the mechanisms of reading comprehension are working and the reader has personally chosen the novel. But the question is: how does reading comprehension work? To make a long story short (though you should definitely read the book) we, as readers, understand what it makes sense to us. Our comprehension of a text is directly connected to the percentage of the words whose meaning we understand without too much effort, which is normally about 90%. As a consequence, if a child is struggling with a book, it means that they can't figure out the meaning of enough of its words.Therefore, it's important to learn how to pick a title that will be the right match for our student's reading skills.
 
So how do we do that?

Leslie Funkhouser has developed an approach that defines 3 levels of book difficulty: Holiday, Challenge and Just Right. Holiday books are, as you can guess,  easy reads, while Challenge are books which will require some adult assistance; finally, Just Right titles are novels which meet both the reader's needs and their level of skill.

How to determine which category the book falls into is a easy enough if you are acquainted with Janette Veatch's "rule of thumb" (1968): turn to a page in the middle of the book you're considering, read it silently and use a finger to mark each unfamiliar word. If you hit 5 words - using all four fingers and your thumb - it  means that the book is too difficult (i.e. a Challenge) for you at that moment of your reading life.
Easy, isn't it?

In addition, the best thing about this method is that it labels the books, not the child, which is fundamental  in order to avoid undermining their confidence and to help expand their reading choices.

Here's the link to Nancie Atwell's school: Center for Teaching and Learning.
Don't miss the recommended books section!

More about books.

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