Bear in Spring
New Year celebrations took up most of January for Bear! However as in the Celtic calendar 1 February is the first day of Spring Bear also had get back to his roots and do some gardening!
Holiday time gets attention!
Bear is now on holidays – so time for a few bear activities such as eating berries – in this photo the raspberries are just right!
Last week Bear was with me and a group of teachers who work with under sevens. No raspberries but a lot of talk about getting and maintaining attention in a classroom of 20 or 30 young children. Can be a daunting task! We all agreed on the basics
- attention levels vary depending on natural development and interest
- good sitting and good listening routines work well
Rhymes and songs that end with children ready to listen really help. Among the favourites was any variation on the simple four-line format
Show me one, show me two,
Show me a wave, look at you!
Ready to learn, ready to see
Ready to listen, now look at me!
Bear of course helps maintain attention and encourages recall when children can
- see clearly what Bear shows them.
- interact with him – moving freely to hold and examine what he gives them.
- play games that involve pointing or naming things that Bear has.
But he also holds children’s attention through individual contact and noticing. Bear always looks around the room at each child. He knows the children in the classes he visits regularly and being an observant little Bear he notices changes. He’s as interested in the children as they are in him- and they really enjoy his attention!
In Vietnam – the year of the cat!
As you can see Bear still manages to have great experiences - and has developed a great liking for the local specialities since we arrived in Hue!
We have been working with some marvellous trainers and teachers in response to new initiatives in the teaching of English to young learners. It’s great to see teacher training being acknowledged as the place to begin!
Bear and very young learners
I use different approaches when Bear works with different age groups. While last term’s older children enjoyed Bear when he’s informed and alert to their interests by contrast very young learners want to enter into his world and learn about him!!
Over the last few months I’ve been having some interesting discussions with teachers of English to this younger age group. The following three themes dominated.
Preparing for Bear: About a week before Bear arrives he could send a photo or a card. The children are usually very excited when they see a photo of Bear and they are keen to prepare for his arrival and they help by finding a place to put his room/box and where to keep his things. They have lots of suggestions! Children could also send Bear a drawing with their name. When he arrives Bear can then play a little game trying to match the children to the drawings – a nice way to make introductions! And all this is helping children realise the very important fact that their new friend only understands English!
Playing with Bear in class: The younger the children the simpler the solution has to be! Basically Bear gets scared if there’s any grabbing or pulling! If this should happen he goes into his room for a rest! Bear can play a game, help children to do things when he remains “alive” in our lesson and to do that he always stays with me! Because very young children will always want to touch Bear he often goes around greeting them or they can come up to say goodbye and pat him or hug him when we finish. Bear’s possessions are very useful – children love playing with everything that Bear brings in or leaves in the classroom.
Taking Bear home: Some teachers I know allow their very young learners to take a puppet home. I don’t do this with Bear. Because he is a major part of English lessons I like to keep Bear active and involved with the children as much as possible. This helps keep them very interested – looking at what he does and what he brings into class in his bag!! Sending him home could take from this mystery and expectation and make him seem more like a regular toy. But of course Bear loves to lend his photo books to children so they can show their parents and families what Bear does when he’s at home !
A learning lesson – sharing puppets with younger children
Nowadays there are very few one teacher schools left. When I was a child they were quite common in rural areas. Of course it was a huge task for one teacher but there were some benefits. One was that children were often asked to work with groups younger than themselves – and in the process leaned more than their schoolwork.
It was a practical solution in a small school where all ages were learning at the same time.
I was reminded of this when on my last day with the 10 and 11 year olds they brought their sock puppets – the ones they had made themselves – to a junior class of 5 year olds – many also ESL learners.
Using the puppets for interaction their task was to encourage the young children to speak – especially to ask questions. Before the visit they had prepared the questions which their puppets would ask– simple getting to know you questions – such as name, age, how many in family, favourite colour or song or food. They had also prepared themselves to help the younger children to ask similar questions of the puppet.
This was going to be a new experience for the 10 and 11 year olds. Excited, a bit apprehensive and fearing a complete breakdown in puppet talk they added a guessing game to the interaction. For each puppet there was a picture card or small item which could be used to play a game. They were careful to pick things the 5 year olds would know such as classroom items or pictures of food or toys
During this lesson older children were paired individually with a child or in some cases two younger children. After five or six minutes each puppet was moved on to another child. In that way all the 5 year olds had the chance to meet at least three puppets.
The 5 year olds loved the puppets and responded wonderfully.
And what did the 10 and 11 year olds take away from the experience? At a basic level they learnt about
- preparing thoroughly for a task
- keeping their puppets in good condition – some repairs were needed after all the previous use!
- paying attention to the language they were using – encouraging the 5 year olds, asking them questions, supporting them so they felt good about answering.
- looking at experiences from a younger child’s perspective.
Watching them during the visit I was so impressed by their kindness and how they moved from being young learners themselves to the role of caring and responsible older learner. The response from the younger children – their admiration and appreciation of the way the puppets were used – was so genuine that the class came away feeling very good about themselves and their achievements. Their immediate reaction was “can we do it again with another younger group?”
Photos don’t do justice to the value of this experience but these three below give some idea.
More on puppets in upper primary lessons
I’ve been away from this blog for a while due to varied work projects and some volcanic ash travel interruption!!
As visiting teacher I’ve continued connecting English with art and maths content. The children in the class – 10 to 11 year olds – are all Bear fans so he is the link that brings content and language together. As part of this work the class decided to make a range of clothes for Bear – jackets, scarves and hats were plentiful.
Bear is now a member of a football team – the legendary Bears United – so he got a supporter’s scarf and a new top with the team name and his number. Numbering on the bears’ team is different. He is 19. The boys decided that Bear should have the skills of two favourite players – Fernando Torres, Liverpool number 9 and Lionel Messi, Barcelona number 10. So putting them both together – 19!
Obviously Bear is delighted – his football skills are now outstanding!!
I am also pleased since it’s another example of something I am always saying. Children in upper primary will work with you in creating a life for your puppet.
Their involvement in Bear’s life and adventures is based on their interests and comes from a genuine enjoyment of joining with you in an imaginative creation through language.
When working with upper primary children I have used their personal interests, their learning in other subject areas and in life generally to encourage them to create a world they imagine for Bear. His main job remains the same – to increase exposure to an additional language in school – and to encourage children to use this language appropriately.
As well as new clothes for Bear this class also made their own speaking sock puppets. The results – as you can see from the photos below – were just great.
Apart from the enjoyment that making something of their own gives to children, after they have made items such as the clothes or puppets they can write about the making experience and
- list materials they used,
- describe how they worked
- explain why they wanted their creations to look this way
When they make puppets they can
- give each puppet a unique personality
- work in small groups to make up a situation
- write out dialogues to suit the situation they’ve created
A live performance can follow involving not just language preparation but co-operation, team work, resourcefulness, responsibility, planning and practice – skills for life.
Bear can dance!
These days I don’t teach or even train on a regular basis so I’m always delighted to be invited into a classroom. And as I generally have Bear with me we get children’s immediate reactions as well as their suggestions.
So let me tell you about a class I’m visiting at the moment – 22 ten to eleven year olds in a regular primary school. Almost two-thirds of the group are speakers of English as a second language – the remaining third are mother tongue speakers. They have a blended curriculum with an extra emphasis on English. Bear is linking with a variety of subjects. Over the next few weeks there are plans to involve him with aspects of maths, art, geography and science.
Up to now Bear has mainly worked with learners of other languages at school so this is a new departure but that’s not why I’m writing about it.
It’s the age group.
Many teachers I’ve worked with over the years have imagined that Bear would not be accepted by children over 8 or 9. Well not so!!
I’ve always found that this upper primary group want to know even more about him than younger learners – their keenness about the experiences they are facing means that they are open to everything.
I generally take my lead from the children… whatever they are interested in is going to work best.
This present group is no different to the others – on our first visit they wanted to know everything about Bear – including the usuals – favourite foods, games, football teams, how many languages can he understand?
Then a voice somewhere to our left said Can you dance Bear ? We can dance….
Bear had never been asked to dance before!
But he knows that you have to show young learners that you’re willing to have a go. I mean if he’s not up to learning something new how can he ask them to try. Bear knows that a bit of example goes a long way…
So …while all these thoughts flashed through his soft furry head he nodded ……Yes … why not!
The music went on … no recording was made of this historic event but we did get photos… the children joined in … TPR set free!
ELTons 2010
“Teaching with Bear” won an ELTon 2010 Innovation Award last Wednesday night!! Such an exciting evening … great buzz about the Delfina Studios when we arrived there and it just got better as the evening went on. Lovely dinner and good company … and maybe a slight nervousness as we waited to hear who was going to win an award! Everyone shortlisted had been invited. It was great to be there and I was as speechless as Bear when we were called out…
http://www.britishcouncil.org/learning-eltons-2010-winners-4.htm
Because of commitments on the following days I am only beginning to reflect on the whole event. It was all so exhilarating – especially for Bear!! Later when he recovered he set about examining the award… and now as you can see he’s got quite attached to it!
First blog post
Through this site I’d like to connect with teachers and trainers involved in children’s language learning. I’ve been working with teacher trainers and teachers of children from 4 – 11 for twenty years. If you want to know more about my previous experiences look at about me.
There are links to my work and extracts from some of my publications. Since a great deal of my current work involves using my puppet assistant Bear I’d also like to introduce him and provide some support for teachers who are interested in using puppet assistants in language learning.
Finally there is a photo gallery. Some of my course photos taken over the years have been lost so if anyone has a photo of their group and would like to share memories of the time we worked together I would be delighted to include it in the gallery!
This site is new and I hope to develop it. If you have any suggestions I would be very pleased to hear from you – so do contact me.