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Old techniques, new results

Cooking class at schoolAnna Silva has been a language teacher for over 20 years in Brazil, teaching in state and language schools. In this article, she looks at ways of reinforcing vocabulary and grammar through practical application for young learners.

It seems that children can learn another language fast; however, they forget as quickly as they learn. So teachers try to find ways to keep young children interested and at the same time help them learn and use the knowledge acquired.

Is there a magic formula to help us?

Over the years, I have developed several projects and I repeat some of them year after year because I do see good results. One of these projects is our cookery classes. I have noticed that cooking really holds the students` attention and helps them memorize vocabulary related to food and verbs related to instructions. Parents have also expressed how surprised they are when they are abroad and see their children mastering the use of simple structures and daily expressions or words. One of these parents was especially amazed because he saw his son asking a waiter for a straw as naturally as if he was using his first language.

In our cookery classes, we follow some steps which I think are crucial to enrich the learning process: introduce the ingredients/ vocabulary, explain the steps, ask students to repeat and explain by themselves what was taught, make the recipe, taste, take a sample home along with the recipe and do a follow-up activity.

As scientists have emphasized the importance of using as many senses as possible to help our brain retain the information taught, the classes are completely practical and the hands-on technique is of crucial importance. Besides this, the very act of cooking brings joy and a lot of laughter to our classes.

The follow-up activity can be a simple and entertaining exercise like a crossword puzzle or  ‘match the columns’, ‘circle the ingredients used’ and ‘put the instructions in the correct order’; but it´s another important step to help them look over what was taught. Howard Gardner proposed that teachers shouldn’t give priority to any one type of intelligence, but that, on the contrary, all types should be catered for in every single class. We can easily follow this advice in any cooking class because students are asked to listen, read, see, make things, walk, taste, and speak.

Another project which complements the cooking class is the gardening project. Every semester, we teach the vocabulary related to gardening: soil, flowerpot, seeds, etc. After this traditional teaching, students not only plant the seeds but often follow their growth. Sometimes we even use them in our cookery classes or just make a flower pot.

Two of our gardening experiences were remarkable: planting tomatoes and strawberries. The tomatoes were used to make a pizza and a smoothie was made with the strawberries. Flowers were also a good idea, since the violets grown were given to their mothers as gifts for Mothers’ Day in May.

The cookery classes help me teach all the vocabulary related to food, which is absolutely fundamental to everyday conversation. The gardening classes are also helpful, not only in what refers to food vocabulary, but also in developing environmental awareness. On Water Day, for instance, we discussed the importance of water for our existence and elicited ways to save water, as well.

Although I love using technology in my classes, I do think that nowadays these activities outside the classroom are a way to surprise students, break the routine and teach new vocabulary effectively! Why don´t you give it a try?

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What’s the point of Extensive Reading?

To celebrate the launch of Project fourth edition, Domino author, Nina Prentice explores the relevance of extensive reading in the upper primary classroom.

School is generally about hierarchies and rules. The teacher is the authority on and dispenser of the syllabus. Students are novices. Their purpose is to consume and learn the year’s programme of study and satisfy the requirements of the examination system.

But, if we believe that learning is not just about passing exams, our classrooms need not follow this pattern. We can break the traditional roles of ‘teacher’ and ‘student’ following our set tasks and duties quite easily. All we need is a library of graded readers and the enthusiasm and passion to read extensively alongside our class.

The transformation is astonishing. Discussion and debate become the norm. Students, even those who are less able or confident, participate enthusiastically because when people respond to personal reading there is no right or wrong answer. Everyone has a voice and a right to have it heard.

Extensive reading is the opposite of the obligatory ‘intensive reading’ we practice in school, crawling like snails over texts and leaving inky slime trails of annotation over every page. Reading extensively is about consuming large amounts of texts greedily to know the end of the story, not to dissect the author’s style. It is about choice, freedom and pleasure.

When we read extensively, we forget our dictionaries because we are reading well within our comfort zone. Choosing freely what we read (and rejecting it if we don’t like it) for our personal enjoyment and interest is liberating, motivating and empowering.

Extensive reading also frees us from daily textbook routines. The class library not only allows us to explore language together naturally through our reactions to the books we are all reading but provides a endless supply of spontaneous activities with which to animate our lessons and engage our students.

The class library allows us to share our reading experiences communally. This collaborative approach, where the normal, formal routines of the classroom are set aside, creates an environment where learning happens naturally through discussion, the expression of opinions and even disagreement! Extensive reading is real language in real use and demonstrates that books will always be the best and most stimulating teachers!

Some examples of practical extensive reading activities

Graded readers provide prompts for classroom activities in ways that many textbooks or undifferentiated material cannot.  Books which students have chosen deliberately and are enjoying reading are self-evidently within their competence.  Textbook work can never be quite as accessible or as pleasurable.  Additionally, students are usually excited about sharing their current reading with the rest of the class and less able students gain confidence when they can perform and contribute in the same way as more able classmates. Continue Reading →


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Project work with Young Learners

To celebrate the launch of Project fourth edition, author of Projects with Young Learners, Diane Phillips considers the benefits of using projects in the upper primary classroom.

What don’t children like?

If I asked you to list some of the thing that children don’t like you might say: – learning stuff of no immediate or obvious relevance e.g. grammar rules or lists of vocabulary; having to read about topics they have no interest in; being told to ‘be quiet’, to stop talking to their friends; being passive; never being asked for their view or about topics they know about; never seeing an end or a point to the work they have to do; always being told what to do!

Yet, this is exactly the way many classrooms work.

What do children like doing?

One way to get children doing what they like while still learning is through projects.  Children enjoy using their imagination – making up characters, stories; being creative – making things, drawing, colouring, cutting and gluing, using multimedia; finding out about interesting stuff; sharing, chatting, working together; talking about themselves, their friends and family, their interests; making choices, deciding for themselves, trying new things out; showing off!

What are Projects?

Experiential learning or ‘learning through projects’ is a tried and tested way of motivating children – by doing what they naturally like doing and avoiding what they don’t like.

It’s an approach founded on sound pedagogic principles. It addresses the needs of the ‘whole child’ to develop a number of different skills

  • the intellectual skills
  • physical/motor and ICT skills
  • social skills
  • learner independence skills

Children are given an opportunity to produce work which is personal and individual, which reflects their own ideas and interests, and their opinions are asked for and valued.

It gives the children an opportunity to bring their knowledge of the world into the classroom and can be cross-curricular – linked to other subjects the children are studying in school. Continue Reading →


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Projects should be creative, collaborative, challenging and fun!

Teacher and students at computerOlha Madylus, a teacher and teacher trainer specialising in both primary and secondary education, shares her thoughts on what makes a great class project.

I visit a lot of classrooms around the world and teachers proudly point out posters on the walls and say “look at my students’ projects.”

Although the work looks very nice, I would argue that it isn’t a project. This work is usually a piece of writing with a picture. What worries me is that the text often seems to be directly copied, or merely cut and pasted, from the internet.

Such work may have some merits (encouraging students to look things up on the internet and designing the final product) but I have two main worries about it. One is that students should be discouraged from what is, in fact, plagiarism and, for me most importantly, that students aren’t getting involved in the challenges and satisfaction of what a full-blown project consists of – it’s not very interesting for them!

The important characteristics of a project are:

They are collaborative – a group of students work together to produce a final product.

By working together students share ideas, divide up responsibilities (depending on what they like to do or are good at), and learn crucial lessons about respecting each others’ opinions and finding a good compromise. They also discover talents in themselves and in their friends.

The final product is important and can be extremely varied, ranging from interviews, to songs, to magazines, to drama.

Choosing how they will present their ideas in the final product is a major part of the project. If it is a PowerPoint presentation or a video drama, these need different types of organisation, materials, and perhaps help from their teacher.

Because the final product can be so varied, the language skills involved are not limited.

Ideally students will have lots of opportunities to use the English language in different ways that are meaningful to them. At lower levels they may not use English to discuss the projects, but they will still be discussing what English they need to get the job done.

Other skills like design, acting, directing, negotiation are involved

And this is where a lot of the challenge (and fun) lies – in putting it all together.

Take a look at this example of a project a class in Serbia created, with the help of their teacher. Notice, although the project is based on one piece of grammar – the conditional – how:

  • it obviously needed lots of planning and collaboration
  • all the students are involved
  • language is used to make meaning in a fun way
  • all the students are enjoying themselves
  • the final product – the video – can be shared and enjoyed by the class and others

Take part in our Engage 2nd edition Project Competition using these tips and you could win a video camera for your school. Competition closes 11th November 2011.

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Interview with Marija Jović, a Project Competition finalist

This interview with Marija Jović, a teacher in Serbia and a runner-up in the recent Project Competition, was originally conducted by Anica Đokić of the Elementary School “Sonja Marinkovic” Novi Sad and posted on the “Sveti Sava” school’s English blog, Svetisavabadnjevac.

Marija's project

Over 700 hundred projects were submitted to the International Project Competition organised by Oxford University Press. The topic was “Communication” and the participating teachers and their students had to create a paper project about this phenomenon. We will hear more about the competition from our colleague, Marija Jović, whose work was chosen among the six best of all 700!

Q: How did you learn about the competition and how did you decide to participate?

The magic word is surfing. I often use the Internet, Twitter, Facebook and other social networks. I also google because I am curious and always willing to learn. I don’t even remember how I came across this competition but I do remember I was determined to give it a try. Except being curious, I am also very competitive. However, I am often not motivated by the prizes, but by the process of reaching the goal, by participating with other colleagues from all over the world and most important by including my students into something new and challenging.

Q: What was your students’ opinion about it and how motivated were all of you to create and submit a project?

I am very proud of my students, especially of those who are willing to participate in different projects. They write, draw, act and even dance if that is necessary for our English lessons. So when I asked them to pose for this project, they were more than interested – they were flattered. Of course, they liked the prizes too and I promised to grant some extra marks for their effort only, regardless of the competition result.

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