Collins Introducing English to Young Children: Reading and Writing

Parents of very young children still learning L1 are skilled at inserting playfulness into regular activities to make each day’s routine fun and motivating. Parents become adept at turning a routine like getting dressed into a simple game by inserting playful language, as well as using different voices and intonation to add surprise, wonder or suspense. Many parents say playful things like:

Does the sock go here? [putting it on the child’s hand]

No, no, silly me!

You show me where it goes!

That’s right! Good!

Where’s the other sock? Here it is …

How many socks are there? Two or three?

Let’s count …

This approach, used innately by parents, must be transferred to English teaching so that young children can reuse their self-language-learning skills effectively to absorb the new language. The Playful Approach in class involves the use of playful language during an activity to turn it into a fun and interactive experience for boys and girls. Although playful language relates to the content, it does not alter the content or the content-related language.

The Playful Approach can be used when presenting new material and also when re-presenting material to be consolidated. In planning an activity, it is important to also plan the language that goes with it, including any accompanying playful language. Of course any plan needs to be flexible, adapting to children’s reactions. Without planning language input, opportunities to extend language can be missed.

As the young child becomes more mature and lesson content becomes more structured, the degree of playfulness needed to motivate gradually decreases, limiting the use of the Playful Approach to the introduction of new material and routine remotivating activities.

1.4.1 Language techniques for the Playful Approach

 Language can be adapted to fit individuals, pairs, groups or a class.

 Language is supported by a hidden syllabus – a structured guide to increase acquisition. Teacher-talk can be flexible to follow children’s interests and needs. Tutor-talks explaining new material need to be pre-prepared, so information can be focused and structured.

 Language motivates by inserting suspense, surprise, mystery. It remotivates, when focus has been lost, by extending short attention spans.

 Language arouses curiosity, inserts wonder, challenges ‘how’ – leading to critical thinking and creativity (for example, Imagine if there was no sun? What if …?).

 Language encourages effort (for example, Try again, I know you can do it That was good but next time let’s do it better.).

 Language challenges (for example, If we have no electricity, what shall we do?).

 Language encourages enthusiasm (for example, Wow, that’s great? I like that).

 Language supports exploring and discovery (for example, Look at the size of this whale!).

 Language inserts humour – play within play – arousing and creating it, and responding to it.

With regard to translations, these should typically only be given once so that children have to focus and listen carefully. Where possible, teachers need to develop children’s gist understanding – a technique they are still developing in L1 to follow new ideas. Where further translation is needed, teachers often find that one child eagerly translates for other children. This means the teacher often has no need to revert to using L1. If there is no ‘child translator’ the teacher can repeat, supporting with more modelling. Children usually understand more than they can say.

1.4.2 The Playful Approach within games

Games sometimes lack speed but by including playful language English teachers can regain focus and momentum without changing the game content. For example, they could say Whose turn is it now? Ok … who can find the ball? The language teacher who includes playful language in games:

 creates suspense and excitement (for example, Will I get a six? … YES!)

 adds energy to speed up formal games (for example, How many have you got? Oh, Toru can get more. Hurry, I’m next. No, sorry, it’s your turn.)

 focusses on both winners and losers (for example, You did well. Next time I think you might win.)

 creates an enjoyable game-like atmosphere (for example, Oh, can you get a red one? Let’s see …)

 sums up progress regularly and predicts possible outcomes, sometimes incorrectly, to amuse (for example, Now everyone has five cards. I know who is going to get six cards first. It’s …!).

Much of the content and ways of working in English games and activities may be unfamiliar to children, as culturally they may be quite different from L1 games. However, at a later stage children like to prove their ownership of an activity or game by showing they can manage it by themselves and take control, even if the teacher has initiated play and set the scene. Adults need to respect this and patiently wait during the initial tries, whilst the child self-corrects through trial and error, rather than jumping in with the correct solution. Overt correction of game playing in front of others can dent children’s pride and demotivate! Children need to reflect, reconsider and redo if they are to be creative.

Once children know how to play a game well, they often act as home-play tutors to their family when playing games in L1 or English. Much to the delight and amusement of parents, their children naturally insert the games at home.

1.4.3 Poor play experiences

Teachers need to continually observe, assess and record children’s type and level of play and be ready to add guidance and add further challenge where needed. Where play is repetitive and at a low level of cognition, the teacher needs to get involved by sensitively interacting with new language or a relevant new object. This will stimulate interest and also scaffold a child’s next level of cognition.

Where teachers are not sensitive to children’s low-level satisfaction and achievement in an activity or game, children can lose interest and can easily become bored or frustrated, saying I don’t want to play. I don’t like this. Interest should always be restimulated before the end of the lesson, since a lack of volition can easily spread to attitudes at home and carry on to the next lesson. Loss of interest can also foster parents’ belief that English lessons are nothing but play and that their child needs more formal instruction.

The art of a skilled teacher is getting the right balance, by providing structure whilst supporting autonomy.

(Stewart)

1.5 Free-choice time

Young children need repetition. Children, without adult help or intervention, repeat games or activities until they gain ownership and control over them. This can most easily be seen in the playground during break time where – either by themselves, in pairs or in a small group – children play the same game with the same rules over and over again. Children need opportunities to experience repetition like this in the English classroom and also at home if they are to gain ownership and control.

‘Flow’ is a state of complete immersion in an activity.

(Csikszentmihalyi)

‘Free play’ was valued by Froebel, Vygotsky, Montessori and Bruner. In the 1960s Bruce renamed it ‘free-flow play’, to include the work on ‘flow’ by the psychologist Csikszentmihalyi.

In ‘flow’ experiences:

 Children are totally in control and self-regulated.

 They are completely immersed and engaged in intense activity

 Children’s bodies and minds are stretched in a voluntary and possibly unconscious effort to achieve something.

 They are free from adult direction.

 They are confirming what they know and absorbing it more deeply

 They gain self-satisfaction, confidence and an inner feeling of happiness.

 Their concentration is so deep and they are so engaged that they are not aware of themselves.

 Their involvement in the activity is unconscious, like breathing – they don’t have to think about it.

‘Flow’ can often occur during activities or games and is associated with achievement and intrinsic self-satisfaction, giving confidence and a feeling of happiness. When it occurs and the length of time it lasts cannot be predicted – all teachers can do is ‘set the scene’ by programming time for free-choice activities. Flow experiences commonly occur in Montessori-type settings, when children are immersed in using game-like materials. Adults may not always notice (or may never have noticed) a child deep in a flow experience.

Consider the following description of how children might modify an activity once they are immersed in a flow experience:

The teacher gives the children a complete set of pre-prepared word cards (such as foot and ball) which make up compound words (such as football). The children are asked to take turns putting word cards together to make compounds. The set might include:

foot ball snow man cup cake cow boy butter fly sun flower toe nail bed room black bird

After a while, the children decide to change the activity to a type of memory game, putting all the cards face down. They turn the cards over one at a time. Children have to keep all the cards in their hand if they can’t make a compound word, or put one down if they can. The winner is the child with the most compound words.

The value of revisiting an activity or game for young children, free from adult direction, is often undervalued in classrooms. Free-flow experiences can include book browsing, which gives children an opportunity to revisit and reread a book independently, organising and controlling their relationship with the story. Through this self-regulated, fluid and adult-free experience, children are able to confirm what they know and absorb it more deeply.

Too much adult-led structure can stifle originality and the self-motivation needed to think and create. A class with only teacher-led activities which do not include the Playful Approach can stunt children’s innate passion. As well as this, frequent chances to repeat activities are needed so that children have the opportunity to repeat patterns – which is crucial for learning.

Free-flow play is an integrating mechanism which brings together everything we learn, know, feel and understand.

(Bruce)

1.5.1 Planning free-choice activities

Time is limited in many English class programmes, but most teachers manage to fit in a free-choice period at least once a month (or if lessons are daily, once every two weeks). In some schools free choice takes up a major part of the lesson time, often taking place after the warm up, or after the summing up at the end of the lesson. In larger classes, children can be divided into two groups, one working with the teacher and the other enjoying free choice. The group changeover can take place within a single lesson, or in the next lesson.

Where teachers cannot fit a free-choice session into their programme, they can make opportunities for children to take activities home to help them revisit a game, book or other activity and experience a sense of flow.

Happiness depends, as nature shows, less on exterior things than most suppose.

(Anon)

Discussion about which free-choice activities will be available in the allocated lesson is an important part of the flow experience. In free-choice situations, children have the freedom to make their own choice from the activities on offer, including book browsing and games that they want to revisit. Teachers need to listen to children’s requests as well as making their own suggestions and noticing children’s reactions to them. This reflective preparation plays an important role for children.

Young children are used to self-regulating their play on screen. They are completely absorbed, returning again and again to the same video game without adult intervention or even sometimes understanding the accompanying language. They manipulate the game until they have mastered it and then happily move on to the next level or game without taking a break. This is another type of flow experience, which can set the level of children’s expectations for off-screen activities.

‘Flow’ has been associated with increased performance in work, sport and in school.

(Stewart)

In free-choice activities children can:

 reflect and make choices (critical thinking)

 self-initiate

 self-motivate

 self-manage, working at their own pace

 concentrate, persist and remain focused

 consolidate their learning, taking it to a deeper level (metacognition skills)

 problem solve, discover and rearrange (creativity)

 collaborate with a partner or group members (social and emotional growth)

 work without interference, except for guidance and encouragement from the teacher when required

 work without external pressure (no fixed process) or set aims or goals (no end products)

 work without rules, except for usual classroom or game rules (no right or wrong, no need to conform to adult-imposed standards)

 harness emotions and find out how to manage them

 imagine and insert humour

 work on building self-learning strategies

 explore new paths

 experiment and take risks

 repeat activities as often as they like.

1.5.2 Managing free-choice activities

Arranging free-choice activity sessions within an English course helps to further holistic learning, since activities can take place in L1 but are accompanied by a ‘hidden’ English syllabus. It also helps to further develop a positive mindset to learning English, as it helps children feel in control of their learning.

During free choice some children revert to using ‘private talk’, thinking aloud and giving a running commentary to themselves (but for all to hear) about their activity. Vygotsky believed this unconscious, private talk helps to develop thought and self-regulation. It can be in L1 or English or a combination of both, entailing ‘code-switching’ to fit words from one language into the other where necessary. Private speech can reveal a lot about a child’s inner thinking and level of understanding, and with maturity this external talk becomes internalised.

To organise a free-choice classroom session, the teacher has to present a selection of activities or games which the children are already familiar with, and then manage the children’s individual choices from the selection on offer. The teacher can present two or three possible activities, depending on what he or she feels the class can manage. The children’s choices should ideally be made in the previous session, with children signing up for their chosen activity. As places are limited for each activity, some children’s first choice of activity may be full and they may have to make a second choice. The teacher may need to teach them to wait until the next free-choice session for their first-choice activity. For example, the teacher could say Only four names, please. Write your name here. This list is full now. What is your second choice? You can have your first choice next time.

This choosing process involves critical thinking and in the first instances teachers need to help children by modelling how to think through the decision-making process and how to make decisions. This discussion around selection helps to develop children’s social and emotional intelligence, as well as showing children how to appreciate the feelings and choices of others. Initially, the teacher has to lead in the choosing of activities, gradually building up a mode of child participation. With maturity and experience, children begin to organise their choices amongst themselves while respecting the feelings of others.

Within a free-choice session, the role of the teacher changes from instructor to consultant, eventually giving guidance only where necessary. Children should be in control and any interference, except to remotivate, could intrude in the child’s world of reflection as they relive their chosen experience at a deeper level. In flow moments the child is functioning at the highest levels: imaginatively, creatively, innovatively.

Where children have chosen to work in pairs or a small group, the teacher’s role is to encourage collaboration as well as awareness of feelings and relationships, while children gradually become more aware of what they and their peers know (metacognition). Different skills and competences are introduced as each child revisits known activities, exploring, discovering, repeating and practising skills.

Children may discuss amongst themselves in English or in L1. The teacher is there to recast back in English where they have used L1, or to inject a phrase or some vocabulary in English which can blend in with the activity.

Teachers have to bear in mind that in free play the process is more important than the product. Teachers should not always be looking for some representation of the child’s work (or visible outcome) as this could inhibit the child’s present freedom and their future attitude to free-choice sessions. During free choice, children have a real reason to use English. Teachers can discreetly observe and assess where children need additional practice with handwriting and/or developing their usage of descriptive words (adjectives and adverbs).

In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and … SNAP! … the job’s a game!

(Mary Poppins, from the Disney film)

2

Tuned-in teaching

2.1 Acquiring English

2.2 Tuning in

2.3 The child’s expectations of the teacher

2.4 Enabling learning

2.5 Motivation and emotional literacy

2.6 Monitoring and assessing

2.7 Teacher input

2.1 Acquiring English

Teaching young children effectively is not only about having natural common sense, it is about making sure that one has the knowledge and skills to interest children in the world about them.

(Engel)

The more we learn about neuroscience, the clearer it becomes that the human brain now develops much sooner than we had believed. Early stimulation can be highly effective. The spread of technology means many more young children can be exposed to English, a language different from L1, at an earlier age.

Although the Internet includes some very useful support material, we need to realise that a lot of content on the Internet is privately published and therefore not necessarily rigorously edited – in some cases information may be incorrect or not suitable for young children. For example, on some sites about the analysis of the 44 sounds of English, /oo/ is sometimes portrayed as representing just one sound rather than two (as in book and food). Many children already know this, however, through playing with language rhyming sounds, story refrains and rhymes.

Today’s young children may well have moved into the stage of being able to analyse and recognise patterns earlier than on Piaget’s original scale (see Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive developmental stages). This may be as a result of visual and oral exposure, especially from screens, from an early age. Due to children’s diverse home experiences, it is quite difficult for teachers to assess how these experiences have developed children’s self-learning strategies for language learning in either L1 or English.

2.2 Tuning in

In many primary schools learning language remains a different experience from learning a core-curricular subject like History. Learning language is still a shared activity – a dialogue between the child and the teacher, older children, parents and extended family. Vygotsky used the term ‘social constructivism’ to describe these moments when children and others who are more experienced make meaning together, by both concentrating on the context of an experience.

Without understanding the whole child it can be difficult to tune in to his or her needs. The English teacher needs to know something of the use of languages and the type of English-language interest in the child’s home, in order to measure how much support and encouragement can be expected for homework (which in primary school becomes a regular additional consolidation activity).

Parents also need to understand the teaching methods and their role in homework. Without understanding the importance of the Playful Approach to provide motivation, homework can become a dreaded task. Without cooperation and helpful explanations, parents may find it difficult to tune in to their child’s English lesson positively, or to understand the child’s progress. Parents might compare the English lesson with the teacher-led instruction used in the other subject lessons.

2.2.1 Teacher–child relationships

By primary school a child’s relationship with the English teacher has developed from that of a protective aunty-like figure in the pre-school years, to one of a caring teacher built on mutual respect. As primary-school pupils, children feel more grown up and more in control of themselves, ready to take responsibility. They now want to be independent and show they can make things happen, although they still need support and guidance from adults. Getting the balance right in the period between pre-school and upper primary is essential. The lower-primary years are an important bridge between the two, in which children need adult help to confidently develop over time their own self-learning strategies as they matures holistically. In helping the children, the teacher is not just thinking of teaching English, but also of adapting English input to the holistically-maturing children’s needs.

Teachers are children’s role models; they are the main source of the children’s input, guiding and tutoring them whilst sharing with them spoken and written language to meet their self-learning strategies, needs and levels.

Young children still want to please their teacher and their parents, too. They look for their approval as it gives them confidence and assurance that they are doing the right thing. Young children want to feel successful, and can now measure their own ability, contrasting it quite accurately with others in their class. They generally know the ‘ranking’ of children in their class and teachers may hear comments like Mari’s the best at English. Akira knows a lot of English words about food. Teachers often try to disguise group levels by calling them different animal names or colours, but children usually work out which is the top group! Children talk about who is the best openly amongst themselves and often explain it to their parents, too.

By lower primary most children are fluent L1 speakers and have been introduced to more formal L1 education (reading, writing, mathematics and science). At the same time they are still unconsciously absorbing more spoken English on which they base the acquisition of formal English literacy skills – reading, spelling and creative writing. Depending on the amount of exposure to English, many will have worked out how and when to use their personal language-learning strategies and unconsciously know which of their strategies are the most effective for them. Some may even be able to verbalise the way they like to learn.