Students' motivation

Motivating students is a real challenge for teachers; however, setting the stage for learning by creating a positive environment constitutes the clue to success. Students will be more receptive to learning when they feel good about themselves. Here are some tips to let each student know how special she/he is and to reinforce desired behaviour.

On one hand, students will be aware of how special they are if teachers recognise students for: helping a classmate; making a new student feel welcome; cooperating; treating others with respect; keeping an orderly workspace and following classroom rules consistently among other things.

On the other hand, teachers can reinforce positive behaviour with the following privileges: sitting by a friend during a lesson; choosing a classroom job for the week; being first in line for a day; designing a bulletin board; choosing a game for the class to play and sitting at the teacher's desk for a day among others.

At this point, it is interesting to explain carefully some techniques that will maximise appropriate behaviour in the EFL classroom:

• Motivation by letter. Entice your students to be on their best behaviour with this teamwork approach. Begin by selecting specific behaviour that needs improvement. Then, as a class, decide on an incentive for reaching the goal. Use graph paper to spell out the reward in large block letters; e.g., 'GAME DAY'. Post the graph paper in a prominent location. Each time you notice a student displaying the target behaviour invite him/her to colour a squareon the graph lettering. When all the letters are coloured, celebrate with the reward.
• Funny money. Cash in on good behaviour with this motivational idea. At the beginning of each week, give a funny-money pattern to a different student. Give the student a black marker to design the funny money of the week. Duplicate a supply of the money to use as rewards, for good grades, appropriate behaviour, completed assignments, or improved handwriting. At the end of the week, let students 'spend' the funny money they have earned to purchase stickers, small treats, or special-privilege coupons.
• Instant awards. Keep a supply of little awards on hand to recognise individual achievements. Using coloured paper, make up different kinds of awards and duplicate them. Each day, place several of the awards in your pocket or on the corner of your desk. When you spot a student demonstrating good behaviour or trying his/her best at a task, present him/her with an award to show that you appreciate his/her efforts.
• Blooming good attendance. Motivate students to maintain good attendance with this blooming good idea. Draw a flowerplot in the bottom corner of your chalkboard. For each day that your class has perfect attendance, draw a flower in the pot. At the end of two weeks, reward the class with two minutes of free time for every flower in the pot. If desired, adapt the idea to reflect a holiday or seasonal theme, such as feathers on a turkey, cherries on a tree, or eggs in a basket.
• Quiet as a mouse. Encourage students to work quietly with this soft and fuzzy incentive. Collect a supply of small stuffed animals, or invite students to bring them from home. When it is time for students to work quietly at their desks, allow each child to place one of these silent, stuffed friends on his/her desktop. The stuffed animal may stay on the desk as long as the student remains quiet and on task. When the assignment is complete, the student returns the stuffed animal to the shelf until needed again.
• Orderly desk incentive. Keeping desks neat and orderly is a task that is easy overlooked in the busy course of the school day. Make sure that the desk situation stays under control with a weekly desk inspection. Inform your students of the day you will check for neat desks, and remind them to have their desks neat and orderly by that day. Then choose a time when the students are out of the room and inspect each desk. It if is in good shape, tape a 'Clean Desk' banner to the desk. When students come back into the room, they will be eager to see whether they have earned the special award.
• Good-deed deputy. Encourage your students to look for their classmates' positive qualities with the help of a Good-Deed Deputy. Each day assign a different student to be the deputy. Throughout the day, he must be on the lookout for students who are doing their best work, helping other students or performing good deeds. Give the deputy a special notebook to jot down each occurrence. Then take a few minutes before dismissal to have your deputy read his official report of the good deeds he witnessed during the day.
• Pass the paper. This quick and easy activity will make each student feel special. Have each child write her/his name at the top of a sheet of writing paper. When you say, 'Pass the paper', each student hands her/his paper to the classmate on her/his right. The classmate writes a positive sentence about the student whose name appears at the top of the paper. Continue having students pass the papers until five or six statements have been written; then collect and distribute the papers to their owners. Repeat the activity once a week, starting the papers at a different location each time to ensure that everyone has a chance to write about each classmate.
• Pal pouch. This special-delivery idea is perfect for birthday students, but it can be used at other times during the year to boost a student's self-esteem. Make a student feel extra special by hanging a Pal Pouch from her/his desk. To make a Pal Pouch, attach a decorated manila envelope to the back of the selected student´s chair. Encourage the other students to place positive notes in the pouch throughout the day. Provide a special place for the student to sit and read her/his mail before dismissal.

Planning for the first days of school

Let us examine some key ideas for breaking the ice during the first days of school:

• Summer similarities. This back-to-school  correspondence provides the background for a first day activity. A week before school begins, program a questionnaire relating to summer; e.g., did you go on a vacation?; did you go swimming?; did you climb a tree?; did you play an instrument?; did you go to the movies; did you meet a new friend?, etc. Then mail each student a copy of the questionnaire and a welcome note instructing the student to bring the completed questionnaire to school on the first day. Prior to the activity, construct a large graph programmed with information from the questionnaire. On the first day, read each question aloud. If a student answered yes, write his/her name on the corresponding section of the graph. The completed graph will give each child an opportunity to find friends with similar interests. Your students may be surprised at how much they have in common.
• Personalised postcards.Remove students' first-day jitters by giving them an early glimpse at some of your interests. During the summer, collect a class supply of postcards that reflect something about you. For example, gather cards with a scene from you home state, from a vacation spot you visited, or of an animal or flower you like. Prior to the first day of school, mail a postcard to each of your students. Include a personal message about the upcoming school year, and ask each child to bring her/his postcard on the first day of school. During the first-day-introductions, ask each student to share her/his postcard and to tell the class something about you. Sharing bits of information about you will make your students feel special and in-the-know on the first day of school.
• Get-acquainted interviews. Use this fun and informative process to help students get better acquainted. Pair students, then give them ten minutes to question their partners -finding out as much as possible about each other. At the end of the interview time, ask a general question such as 'What is your partner's middle name?', 'What is your partner's favourite food?', 'What pets does your partner have?', 'How many brothers and sisters does your partner have?', How old is your partner?', 'When is your partner's birthday?, etc. Give each student a chance to answer the question, and let his partner confirm or deny the answer. After asking several questions, your students will feel well acquainted with their partners and other classmates, and you will know more about your students, too.
• Back-to-school Simon says. Try this twist on Simon Says for a great way to get to know your students. Have your students stand; then say a traditional Simon Says phrase, and add a request for information. For example, 'Simon says, stand on one foot and tell me your favourite food'. Say the phrases as quickly as possible and occasionally omit the words 'Simon says' to keep students alert.
• Information, please. Here is a beginning-of-the-year method for lining students up. It not only keeps students quiet and orderly while they get in line, but it helps you become familiar with their interests. Before you have your students get in line, ask a personal question such as, 'What is your favourite colour?'. Call on each student to answer the question. After each child answers, have her/him line up. Students will quietly listen to their classmates' answers, and before you know it, everyone is in line and ready to go.
• Take-home treats. After the first day of school, send your students home with special messages and treats from you. Create different novel notes for each of your students and attach the appropriate treat; e.g., 'I'm glad you're in my class! I'm nuts about you!', 'Here's a treat for a great job today! Keep the good work'; 'You're one terrific human being! I'm lucky to have you in my class'; 'I'm so happy to have you in my class. You're a very special student'. Then, distribute them to your students as they leave for the day to let them know how special they are. These treats will be such a hit that you will want to share them on other important occasions throughout the year.
• Paper-bag people. Use this proposal to help students get to know one another. During the first week of school, give each student a paper luch bag and a variety of scrap materials. Ask each student to transform his/her paper bag into a puppet that looks like himself/herself. Provide each student with a piece of paper containing several items students must write about; e.g., name, favourite colour, favourite book, things I like doing, a place I like going, etc. Once they have filled in the information, have each child cut the completed form on the solid line and glue it to the back of his/her paper-bag puppet. Have students use the finished puppets to introduce themselves to their classmates; then place the puppets in a centre for students to explore on their own. These puppets people will help students get acquainted without the usual inhibitions.
• Colourful welcome. Welcome your students back to school by preparing this colourful door display. Create three large sunflowers using green construction paper for leaves and black for the flowers' centers. Also make a class supply of yellow flower petals. Mount the leaves and flower centers on your classroom door. Label the flowers' centers as follows: 'WATCH', 'US', 'GROW'. As each student arrives on the first day of school, have her/him write her/his name on a petal and attach it to a flower on the door. By the time all your students have arrived, the colourful greeting will be complete.

What are the appropriate criteria for choosing and teaching vocabulary?

Image: Space Vocabulary book, by jimmie

Before teaching children new vocabulary, it is essential to carefully select the word or words within a particular word group that you want to teach. Here are some things to bear in mind when choosing new vocabulary:

• Remember that there are both active and passive vocabulary. Active vocabulary is what the children both understand and use; passive vocabulary is what they understand but are not able, or are required, to use. Obviously most of the words you use in class will only be passive vocabulary for young children.
• Choose vocabulary that is relevant to your pupils' age, lives and interests. E.g., nationality or telling the time has no meaning for a four-year-old.
• Keep your expectations realistic. Have a basic group of words that you want to teach the whole class, the number of which will depend on their age group. You can teach some extra words to the quicker pupils and the slower ones may absorb them passively, but do not expect the slower ones to use them actively.
• See if there are any words that resemble L1 ('football' is an easy word for most children).
• Think of what they already know which might be easy to build on. E.g., if they know 'flower' and 'toy' it is easy to teach them 'flower shop' and 'toy shop' when they are learning names of shops.
• You can expect your pupils to find some word groups more difficult to learn than others, for a number of reasons: a) if a word group consists mainly of words of an origin that is unfamiliar to your pupils (e.g., English words of Anglo-Saxon origin are unfamiliar to speakers of Romance languages), then these will be hard to learn; b) words that are difficult to pronounce, or are long, can also be problematic; c) food is usually an easy topic (e.g., salad, hamburger, spaghetti) while clothes are quite difficult, with lots of words that sound similar (e.g. shirt, skirt, shorts).
• When playing a game with the whole class, take care to choose the right level of vocabulary for each pupil: challenge a quicker pupil with a difficult word and encourage a slower pupil with an easy one.

Once these tips have been explained, let us now analyse how to teach difficult words. Before teaching a number of new words, check to see which ones will present the most difficulty. Here are some ideas to help you teach them more easily:

• Get the children to clap on the stressed syllable(s) of a word as they say it.
• Put the word in a rhythmic or rhyming sentence. E.g., I eat meat; Rice is nice!; I fly through the sky!
• Separate the word into syllables as you say it, getting the children to follow the sound curve in the air with their fingers.
• Teach words that rhyme, together. E.g., nose and toes.
• Get your pupils to visualise a picture from rhyming words. E.g., a spoon in the moon.
• Get the children to repeat a word after you in different ways. E.g., in a deep voice or a little, squeaky voice, in a whisper or a shout, slowly or quickly, etc.

Now, some suggestions for how to teach vocabulary in ways that will make it easily understandable to young children, and that will be enjoyable at the same time: pictures, murals, crafts, sequences and stories.

In relation to pictures, they are an obious, simple and easy way to teach vocabulary. If they are attractive, children will love them. So look out for good pictures all the time, especially in magazines, and keep them for future use. Some recommendations to miximise the use of pictures are the following:

• Make sure the pictures are simple, clear and can be seen from the back of the class.
• Stick your pictures on coloured card and cover them with transparent adhesive plastic to protect them.
• Choose a different colour for each lexical set. This will help you identify them quickly and the children will also learn to identify lexical sets.
• Write the name of the object in a corner, on the back of the card, so you can show the picture to the class and know what you are showing.
• Enlarge a photocopy to make a poster and use it to teach vocabulary. You can divide a sheet of paper into four and have each part enlarged to A3 size. Tape the sheets together and you will have a good poster. Get active children or those who finish their work quickly to colour it for you.
• Later, give each pupil the same photocopy in its normal size. They can colour it, while you go around checking what they know. Use it as an end-of-unit task or for recording pupils' progress.
• It is a good idea to have two pictures or posters which show the same subject but which are slightly different. Use the first poster to teach the vocabulary and structures. Then use the second one to see if your pupils can use the new language without the visual prompts or reminders of the first poster. This is a good way to find out how much your pupils have assimilated, and is another useful exercise for testing.
• When your pupils are older, use pictures to gradually teach them how to build a paragraph. When they see a picture, children usually start by commenting on the first detail that catches their eye. E.g., about a picture of a park, they will say 'The flower is red'. Try and teach them to begin by saying what the picture is (It's a park), and then to talk about bigger things before going into detail. Get them to finish by saying something general about the picture (I like the park/the picture). This sequencing of ideas can be taught by asking questions, e.g., What's this?; What is the most important thing in the picture?; Do you like the...?

As far as murals are concerned, they are excellent teaching materials, especially if the children make them themselves. Making a mural with your pupils is a very complete lesson, though you will need more than one lesson to finish it. Once finished, a mural decorates the class and is good teaching material.

As regards crafts, these are generally very interesting for students, since authentic activities involve children active participation. Older childrenwho are learning to write can keep a simple diary of their activities, with two or three lines of description and a drawing of the activity.

A fun and easy craft is making a potato man (or animal). These are the materials needed: one potato per child, toothpicks for the arms and legs, wool for the hair (have two or three different colours), felt tip pens for drawing the face, scissors, and for older children, some card for making hands, shoes, etc. and some tape to fasten these to the toothpicks.

The basic procedure for this activity is the following: revise the names for parts of the body and teach the words you are going to need for the craft; demonstrate and explain in English how to make the potato man and keep the wool, extra toothpicks, tape and card on your table so the children have to come and ask you for them in English; give out the potatoes. Each child asks 'Can I have a potato, please?'. Give each child only two or three toothpicks so they have to come and ask for more. They stick the toothpicks into the potato, some for his arms and legs, and some on his head. They can wind the wool round the sticks to look like hair. They draw his face.

As an extension activity, students can draw a picture of their potato man and while they are drawing, you can go around the class and get them to describe their man to you. If any adaptation is required for older children, you may ask the children to write a line or two and/or invent a little dialogue in pairs, using their potato men (e.g., Hello!; How are you?; What's your name?; Do you like sweets?; etc.).

Learning vocabulary

Vocabulary cannot be really learned by looking at words, writing them down, and then writing the translations of words. Vocabulary learning is a large part of the work when studying a language.

There are different ways of learning vocabulary and the aspects which are important will vary with the word itself and the purpose for which you want to use it.

As teachers we have learned ways of teaching vocabulary and probably use a variety of presentation techniques, such as building a context or situation (at the doctor's); using flashcards or working from known language to unknown language - 'huge' is another word for very, very big. However, as we all experience, learners do not necessarily learn everything we teach them. The key is to look for successful learning techniques. Naturally, different techniques will suit different learners.

If students must react in some way to the vocabulary being learned, they will learn better. Vocabulary can be processed at various levels:

• Cognitive: students can process, make decisions about, categorise or rank words.
• Affective: they can associate words with something significant to them, they can express their feelings about words and through words.
• Physical: they can learn the sound and stress pattern of a word, and can give a physical reaction to it, a technique used in a method known as Total Physical Response.

Here, there are some activities for learning vocabulary taking into account the levels mentioned above:

• Students follow the teacher's instructions, acting them out: 'Walk to the wall', 'Raise your left hand' 'Touch the wall'...
• The teacher asks students to close their eyes and listen in silence for one minute. At the end of the minute they write down in English all the sounds they heard while their eyes were closed: 'a car', 'a door', 'the wind', 'a person walking'...
• Students work in pairs to complete a grid like the one below, using vocabulary they have recently studied, e.g., as revision at the end of term / before a test.

Word	Part of speech	Opposite	Similar word	Rhyming word	Example sentence
enormous	adjective	tiny	huge		My dad’s feet are enormous!
worse	comparative adjective	better		nurse	My grammar is bad, but my spelling is worse!
heard	verb, past of hear			bird	Say it again. I don’t think he heard you.

• Before doing a speaking activity describing a house, students brainstorm vocabulary to produce a mind-map. They consult each other, the dictionary or the teacher for the words they don't know.
• Students read a text and answer questions about difficult vocabulary which encourage them to work out the meaning from context.
• Students look at pictures of a variety of things: spiders, ice-cream, a beautiful landscape, a fun-fair, etc., and have to react to each one: 'She's beautiful!'; 'That's horrible!'; 'That's boring!'
• Each student chooses a word they like and says why they like it, or draws a picture.
• Students label classroom items in English.
• Students work in pairs or small groups to match words that rhyme.
• Students think of someone very important to them and choose five words or phrases to describe that person, e.g., 'kind', 'blond hair', 'funny', 'fat', 'pretty'.

Apart from working actively on learning vocabulary in class students have to take responsibility for studying outside class as well. In order to do this, they need to find systems of recording vocabulary.

Different techniques will appeal to different learners. Some techniques are particularly suited to certain aspects of vocabulary learning. Working on a grid may be a good way to deal with relationships between words, e.g., imagine-imagination-imaginative-imaginable-unimaginable. Drawing a picture may help students to understand and remember prepositions such as in, on, behind, next to, etc. Singing a song may help students to master the pronunciation of words.

In addition to these ideas, some other ways to record vocabulary can be used at word level:

• Word + translation.
• Word + picture.
• Word in an example sentence.
• Word + definition.
• Word + pronunciation (syllables and stress).
• Word + information (formal/informal, medical, legal, etc.)
• Word(s) in a text.
• Word + opposite/synonym.
• Word cards (English on front, L1 on back).
• Word + grammar (verb, noun, adverb, etc.)

At this point, some techniques will be analysed in order to record vocabulary:

• Vocabulary notes. Encourage students to keep vocabulary notebooks or files. These can be kept in a variety of ways -whatever the students prefer. Introduce them to different ways of doing this, in order to get them to try out new ideas. A useful technique is to ask them to experiment, at a week time, with different ways of recording new vocabulary (e.g., week one: note the translation; week two: write an example sentence; week three: group words on similar topics; week four: give the dictionary definition). After a few weeks they will probably realise that different words demand different treatment. A word like 'cod' is probably best dealt by a translation, a word like 'nice' is better delat by a series of examples. They will also realise which ways are most meaningful to them.
• Games. It is often useful for students to work together. They can quiz each other, to make learning new words more fun. The spelling game The Hangman is an old favourite that can help students learn and remember vocabulary. Another fun activity is back-spelling. One student 'writes' a word on a friend's back with a finger (you need to write quite large, and slowly). The friend has to guess the word. This is especially good for students who have difficulties with spelling.

In addition to these proposals, other techniques can be really useful when studying vocabulary, such as the following:

• Underlining or highlighting words in a text.
• Keeping word lists and reading through them regularly.
• Recording new words onto a CD or computer.
• Covering the word in your notebook and guessing if from the definition or translation.
• Asking a friend to test you.
• Carrying cards in your pocket with new vocabulary written on them.
• Using a dictionary to find vocabulary on a certain topic.
• Repeating words to yourself many times.
• Making up stories using new vocabulary.
• Collecting items such as tickets, advertisements, or packets with new words on them.

Oral skills

How can we develop listening comprehension in our students?

To answer this question we must start by thinking about how we listen. We tend to listen to things in two different ways:

• Intensive listening: if we want to know lots of detail about what we are listening to, we are listening intensively. If we are listening to the direction to a friend's house, for example, then we need to understand all of what we hear.
• Extensive listening: If we only need to get the main idea about what we are listening extensively. This is what we do when we listen to an interview on the radio at the same time as cooking dinner.

Students need to be able to do both kinds of listening and to choose the right skill depending on the circumstances.

Image: Anxiety by Practical Cures

Here, it's relevant to pay attention to how to overcome anxiety. Students often get the idea that they have to understand everything in the new language. They tend to feel anxious and stop listening immediately when they come across something they don't understand. This is not helpful for them and they need the opportunity to realise that they can be successful learners without understanding every word.

One way to help students become more independent listeners is to give them choices about the skills they want to practise. For example, if you are playing a recording of the news, your students can choose to listen:

• Extensively and find out how many stories are in the headlines that day.
• Intensively to a particular news story for specific details.

When you do a listening activity, think about how you could give your students some autonomy. Try designing two different sorts of task or tasks at two different levels and give your students a choice about which one they want to do first. For example: a) play them an English pop song and let them choose between completing a gap-fill of the words of the song and answering questions like 'What is this song about?'; 'How many verses are there?'; b) get the students to evaluate how successful their listening was by asking them whether they found out what they needed to know from the track or if they enjoyed choosing the task by themselves.

As far as speaking is concerned, students have very different abilities and levels of confidence about speaking in English. Some may be shy about speaking English; be nervous about making mistakes; be embarrassed if they get something wrong, give up very easily if they don't know the right word, etc. Others are more willing to take risks and, as long as they get their message across or simply they do not worry too much about making mistakes.

Anxious students worry about accuracy and more confident students concentrate on fluency. To find out what your students' worries are, a questionnaire can be offered to them in order to identify not only their worries, but also their interests. Some statements for the questionnaire are given as examples: I enjoy speaking English; I like making English friends and talking to them in English; I try to avoid speaking in English in front of the rest of the class; I never volunteer to speak in English in class; I enjoy doing role plays in class; I don't mind speaking in English if I know exactly what to say; I hate making mistakes when I speak English. Thus, students will tick the statements which are true for them and then compare their answers with a partner's.

Accuracy and fluency are important for effective language learning so we need to help learners understand the difference and develop both. They need to know what kind of learner they are already and we need to give them strategies to develop further in and out of class.

Apart from this, students should learn some strategies to get out of difficulty when their communication goes wrong. For example, they need to be able to: ask for clarification; say that they do not understand, and paraphrase what someone else has said to check that they have understood.

Ask your students to make a list of all the different ways they know in English to say that they don't understand and to ask for clarification, e.g., 'Sorry?'; 'Pardon?'; 'Could you say that again?'

Students can practise these in pairs. Get them to take it in turns to say something very difficult or very fast and get the other student to choose an appropriate way of asking for help. If your students are beginners or cannot think by themselves of what things to say, you could give them a list of ideas to start them off.

Here, special emphasis will be given to rhythm, rhyme and music. Students can improve their pronunciation with activities which are fun and involve rhythm and music so that we are making use of more than one sense at the same time. You can get your students to: sing current pop songs in English (they can sing along to a CD); and recite poems with a strong rhythm and lots of rhymes (try using poems written for younger children). Students will concentrate on the patterns and rhythm and the individual sounds will take care of themselves. They enjoy songs and poems and they can write their own and recite these in class. Some students with a strong musical sense will find this a really good way of learning and may want to extend these activities outside the classroom by singing and reciting songs and poems at home.

Image: Church (Portfolio) by Jake Guild

Another way to improve students' spoken skills is to put on an end of term English concert where students perform and produce songs, poems or short plays in English. It could be fun for teachers and students.

Independence can also be promoted by having students record themselves. They are setting their own standards of what is good enough and are deciding by themselves which particular aspects of pronunciation to work on. In fact, students often set themselves very high standards: they can use this for speaking as well as listening practice; they may enjoy singing along to English pop songs; they might also record themselves. This is an excellent way to improve pronunciation without the embarrassment of being heard by anyone else.

Teachers (in class) can make a list of aspects of speech for students to work on at home and get them to monitor their own progress. For example: a) practise distinguishing between /t/, /d/ and /id/ sounds in the regular past tense verbs: kissed, walked, visited, jumped, smoked, collected, cried; b) work on a list of ten new two or three syllable words learnt that week, saying them and putting the stress in the right place.

How do I teach grammar in the EFL classroom?

How to teach grammar in the EFL classroom is a main question for every English teacher. At first sight, you might think that teaching grammar is just a matter of explaining grammar rules to students. However, teaching grammar effectively is a much more complicated matter. There are a number of techniques that can be used to teach grammar effectively:

• The ABCs of nouns, verbs and adjectives. Your students will love working together on this yearlong parts-of-speech project. Cover a large section of a wall with paper; then tape cardboard alphabet letters from A to Z to the paper, leaving space beneath each letter. Add the title 'The ABCs of the parts of speech'. Next challenge each youngster to cut pictures of nouns, verbs, and adjectives from magazines. Have him/her label each picture with its name and part of speech; then mount the pictures under the appropriate letters. Challenge your students to add pictures to the display throughout the year.
• I can... Remind students that a verb is a word that shows action. Then have students name examples of verbs. List their ideas on the chalkboard. Pair students; then assign each pair a different verb from the list, keeping each assignment a secret from the other pairs. Have each pair pantomime its verb for the class. Further challenge youngsters by having each student write, then illustrate four verbs on a sheet of divided paper titled 'I can...' If desired, collect the pictures and bind them between two covers; then add the title 'What can you do?' Place the booklet at a reading corner for all to enjoy.
• A picture for every verb. Here is an activity that reinforces the concept of verbs. Instruct each child to cut a picture from a magazine; then have her/him glue it to the middle of a sheet of cardboard or construction paper. Have the student list verbs around her/his cutout that relate to the picture, then challenge her/him to write a story that incorporates the verbs on another sheet of paper. Have the children tape their stories to the bottom of their pictures. Display the finished projects on a wall or bulletin board.
• Silly sentences. Use this activity to help youngsters understand the importance of nouns and verbs. After reviewing nouns and verbs, write a student-generated list of both parts of speech on the blackboard. Then have each student choose a different noun and verb from the list and write them on separate cards. Collect the cards and place them into the corresponding container labelled 'nouns' or 'verbs'. Each student draws one card from each container and writes and illustrates a silly sentence using the words on the cards. Invite student volunteers to share their sentences and illustrations with their classmates. No doubt your students will have a better understanding of nouns and verbs.
• One of-a-kind word search. Challenge your students to learn the parts of speech as they search for words. To begin, shere the following information with your students: a) nouns: name a person, place or thing. They can be singular (one) or plural (more than one); b) pronouns are words that are used to take the place of nouns, such as 'I', 'he', 'she', 'it'; c) verbs are words that show action, such as 'run', 'skip' and 'hop'; d) adjectives are words used to describe nouns, such as 'tall', 'short', 'thin', and 'hairy'. Then, divide students into four groups. Assign each group a different name: nouns, pronouns, verbs, or adjectives. After that, provide each group with a highlighter and a copy of a selected story or passage. Have each group read the story and then highlight examples of its assigned part of speech. Ask groups to share their answers with the rest of the class. If desired, write the students' responses on the chalkboard. As students learn the parts of speech, provide additional sheets for individual youngsters to highlight.
• Sentences with spunk. Instruct each student to think of a noun and list adjectives to describe it on a sheet of paper. Then, on another sheet of paper, have her/him write a sentence that incorporates the noun and adjectives. Challenge students to see who can come up with the longest, most descriptive sentence. To enhance the activity, have youngsters copy and illustrate their sentences on sheets of paper. Mount the completed drawings on a bulletin board titled 'Sentences with spunk'.
• Guess what? Play this guessing game to finish your adjective lesson. Challenge each youngster to think of an object. Instruct students to keep their objects secret. Then have them list adjective clues about their objects on blank cards. Invite a volunteer to read her/his clues aloud to her/his classmates. Ask the other students to guess her/his object based on the clues she/he gave. Provide time for additional volunteers to share their clues.
• Describe that. Challenge your youngsters to create these picture webs as they learn about adjectives. Display an object in a prominent location; then have students use words to describe what they see. List students' responses on the chalkboard. Tell students that the words they shared are adjectives, words used to describe nouns. To make a web, a student cuts a detailed picture from a newspaper or magazine; then she/he glues it to the middle of a sheet of construction paper. She/he draws five lines extending from her/his picture and writes an adjective to describe her/his picture at the end of each line. If desired, have her/him write a sentence for each adjective. Provide time for students to share their work with their classmates.
• Plural noun fun. Write the names of different nouns (in their singular form) on separate cards. Also label three baskets '-s', '-es', and '-ies'. Show students pictures of a kiss, a cow, and a bunny. Have students name the plural form of each noun; then write it on the blackboard. Discuss the different endings plural nouns may have. Then distribute the singular-noun cards. Ask each student to determine the correct plural ending and place his/her card into the corresponding basket. Check to be sure each card is in the right basket.
• Colourful sentences. Reinforce basic sentence skills with this colourful idea. Remind students that sentences are complete thoughts with subjects (or noun phrases) and predicates (or verb phrases). Ask students to share sentences; then help them identify each part. Next invite a student volunteer to write the subject part of a sentence on the blackboard. Then ask another student to finish writing the sentence with a different colour of chalk. Challenge students to name the subject and predicate. Have additional youngsters write sentences on the blackboard until every child has had a turn. Using two different coloured crayons, each student then writes and illustrates a sentence (in a similar manner) on a sheet of construction paper. Provide time for each student to share his/her sentence with his/her classmates.

Good luck with your grammar-teaching!

'My Family Tree'

Image: Genealogy Family Tree, by przylga

'My Family Tree' is a project you can carry out in your classroom to work with the vocabulary about the family.

It's a very simple project with which we develop some key competences:

• Linguistic communication competence.
• Social and civic competences.
• Initiative sense and entrepreneurship.
• Cultural awareness and expression.

The students will work in groups of three and each one of them will have to assume his/her part of the work to complete the taks together with the rest of the group.

The teacher will show a model of family tree for them to know how to do it.

To carry out the project, the students must get photos of famous people, cartoon or comic characters, etc. They can use magazines or the Internet. If they use the Internet we will be also developing the digital competence. Using this material they will create a figured family tree, the funniest the better. As a support for sticking the photos they can use any material they prefer (cardboard, a large piece of cloth, wood...). It's very important to use imagination and draw pictures or stick various things to decorate it (flowers, buttons, leaves...). The members of each team will have to meet out of the school timetable (at home, in the library...) to do the project, and they will have to bring it to the classroom on a determined date and show it to the rest of the class, giving the opportune explanations and answering the questions of their classmates.

Activities to use children's literature in the EFL classroom

Can it!

Image: An empty tin can,
by Sun Ladder

A story container will soon become a favourite way of book sharing in your classroom. 

To make a story container, students need a clean, empty can with the label removed. Provide your students with a label-size piece of cardboard or construction-paper, some craft sticks, construction-paper scraps, tape, and crayons or markers. Have them decorate the cardboard label with the title, the author, and an illustration from a chosen book. Then have them tape the completed label around the can. Next have students use the construction-paper scraps and craft sticks to create a stick puppet for each important character in the story. To talk about their book, students show their decorated container and talk about each character puppet. After the presentation they store the puppets in the container and display them in the classroom for an exhibit.

Reports on file

These stylish file-folder book reports will tempt your youngsters to read one another's favourite books.

To make a file-folder report, a students writes the title of her/his chosen book on the tab of a coloured file folder. Next, he/she completes a report form with this information about the book: title; author; illustrator; my favourite character; my favourite part of the story; question about the story. At the bottom of their paper, students write a question about the story on several lines provided. Then, they draw a scene from the story on a sheet of drawing paper. Finally they staple their completed form to the left side of the folder and their illustration to the right side. Store the folders in a file box for students to review during free time.

Handy-dandy reports

Give literature a hand with cute book reports. Have each student write the title and author of their book on a hand pattern. Next, on separate squares of white paper, have students illustrate two different characters, an item in the setting, and two objects that were important in the story. Have them cut out the pictures and the hand pattern. Then have them glue one picture to each finger of the hand cutout. Display the completed projects on a bulletin board titled 'Give a big hand to these books'.

It's in the bag

Image: Brown Bag (with staple)
by Jeffrey Beall

Students will enjoy giving book reports when they assume the roles of their favourite characters. Have each students use markers, construction-paper, and thread to decorate a paper lunch bag to resemble a character from a favourite story. To report on her/his book, the student slips the puppet onto her/his hand and speaks about the story from the character's point of view. After the students have given their presentations, staple the puppets to a bulletin board. To complete the display, post a label near each puppet identifying the character and the story it is from.

Pre-reading word search

Stimulate your students' interest in new vocabulary with this pre-reading strategy. Before the class begins reading a new story, provide several minutes of pre-reading time in which students scan the story for interesting or unfamiliar words. After the allotted time, ask students to report their findings. List their responses on a sheet of chart paper labelled with the title and author of the story. Discuss the meaning and pronunciation of each word on the list before having the students read the story. The children will be more familiar with the story's vocabulary, which will increase their comprehension of the reading material. After reading the story, post the word list in your classroom as a handy reference for students to use with other reading and writing assignments.

Story wheels

To begin, ask students to name the beginning, middle and ending events from a given story. List their responses (in the order they occurred in the story) on the blackboard. Then have each student illustrate the events on a story wheel. To make a story wheel, a student uses a pencil and a ruler to divide each of two paper plates into four sections. Students write the title and author of the story in the top right quadrant of one plate. Then they rotate the plate one-quarter turn clockwise,, label the top right quadrant 'beginning', and draw a picture of a corresponding event there. In a similar manner, she/he labels the next quadrant 'middle' and illustrates the problem of the story. Then she/he labels the final quadrant 'ending' and illustrates the ending of the story. To make a wheel cover, they draw a large dot in the centre of the second plate where the four lines intersect. Next students carefully cut away one section of the plate, leaving the dot intact. Then, they erase the pencil marks remaining on the plate and personalise it as desired. Then, using a brad, they attack the wheel cover atop the wheel. To use the story wheel, the students turns her/his wheels so that the second event is showing. She/he tells what happened before and after the second event. To check her/his answer, she/he turns the wheel forward or backward to reveal the other events. Continue having students turn their wheels to a determined event and having them tell what happened before and after the event shown.

Make friends with a book

Help your students select the best in literature by providing them with some references. You will select short-story books, beginning chapter books, a selection of stories to read aloud to your students and a list of favourite authors. Your class is sure to find several favourites among these teacher-recommended titles.

Life-size library figures

Invite your youngsters to enter the world of books by enlarging library-book characters onto a poster board. Colour, cut out, and laminate each figure. Display the characters in your classroom or in the hallway. Then add conversation bubbles encouraging students to read.

All aboard!

Image: locotoy, by jean victor balin

Mount a cardboard engine on a classroom wall. Provide each student with several coloured copies of a boxcar pattern to take home. Each time the student reads a book at home, have her/him complete the information on the boxcar, cut it out, and return it to school. Mount the boxcars on the wall to create a train. As the train grows throughout the year, so will your students' reading abilities.

The growing caterpillar

Image: pipe cleaners, by essie

Motivate students to read independently by challenging them to achieve a group reading goal. To create this display, cut a supply of large cardboard circles. Add pom-pom eyes, a nice mouth and pipe-cleaner antennae to one circle to resemble a caterpillar's head. Mount the caterpillar's head on a classroom wall. Tell students that for every book a student read, a segment will be added to the caterpillar. The student must write her/his name, the author's name, and the title of the book on a cardboard circle, then have a teacher or parent initial the circle to indicate that she/he told them about the book. Reward the students with a special party in their honour upon completion of their goal. Your students will be amazed at how fast the bookworm grows.