“I’m fine, thank you.”

One of the most dreaded questions in every English teacher’s arsenal is: How are you?

From an extremely young age, students are asked this question and given the magic response “I’m fine,” which then grows into “I’m fine, thank you,” and stagnates at “I’mfinethankyouandyou?”

(And we are all aware of the vicious cycle known as andyouism.)

The great news is that, with young learners, we can attempt to eradicate this epidemia before it begins. Today, we bring you a new part of your class routine: “How are you?”

With children who are three and four years old, you can already get them telling you how they really are, instead of that they are “fine.” (And if this doesn’t have you jumping on your chair, read on…)

Super Simple Learning makes a wonderful set of flashcards that you can print, laminate, and use every day for this part of your class routine. Find them here.

After singing a hello song and making a circle, we review the emotions flashcards and make hand play for each one that they have learned. So, “I’m good” is one thumb up, “I’m great” is two thumbs up, “I’m wonderful” is reaching up to the sky, etc.

Once we’ve reviewed, we ask the student on our left, “How are you?” and (especially at the beginning) show them the options on a flashcard. They answer and then ask the next student (lots of times, we model the first few times with, “Ana, ask Carlos, ‘How are you, Carlos?'”). Go around the circle before moving on to your next activity.

With three and four year olds, we generally use “good,” “great,” “wonderful,” and “not so good.” With older students, you can incorporate even more emotions.

When a student answers with the dreaded “I’m fine, thank you,” we often try to mimic their answer, but exaggerating their style (very fast, very quiet, very sad, etc.) It gets them laughing and very interested.

When they discover that saying “I’m fine, thank you” is way more funny than “I’m good” or “I’m great,” then we incorporate high fives for those students that answer correctly on the first try.

Soon, you’ll be knowing more about your students’ emotions and hearing less of the dreaded “I’m fine, thank you. And you?”

Upcycled activity for ESL Young Learners

One of the keys to keeping very young learners (ages 2-5) interested and involved in the class is to switch games or topics frequently. An activity can be anywhere from 1-5 minutes; more than that and the students simply don’t have the attention span to stay connected to the material. Particularly for young students, it’s important to use English in a natural way rather than attempting to “teach” vocabulary and grammar out of context. That’s why playing with things that don’t seem very much like a serious English lesson is often so effective at helping young learners speak more English!

We are always trying to come up with new activities that can be fun for young learners and don’t require a lot of set-up or tear-down. The longer we spend preparing an activity, the less time that our students are getting active language practice, and the more likely they are to become distracted (although you can read about some passive teaching techniques here!). We need things that work quickly and are fun!

We have been trying out a new upcycled pasta shaker and have found that it’s lots of fun! It’s also a great way to practice numbers, colors, the “stop” and “wait” commands, and to turn nervous energy into a positive learning experience!

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Pasta shakers require very few things that you probably have around your house or school:

• a clean, dry plastic bottle with a lid
• something that children can touch and count to fill the bottle

Here’s how we play pasta shakers:

1. Show the students your plastic bottle. Ask what it is. Ask them if it’s an apple or a banana (no!). Tell them that it’s a bottle! What can we drink out of a bottle? Milk or water!
2. Tell the students to listen (shhhhh, listen! in a quiet voice). Shake the bottle. They won’t hear anything. Look disappointed and even be a little silly with your bottle trying to make a noise.
3. Bring out a small box with 10 pieces of pasta (You can repeat this activity with other fillers, like marbles, clean rocks or colored pasta. Make sure that it is an age-appropriate filler and that, should a student get it in his or her mouth, there is minimal choking risk!). Show the students and say Wow, pasta! We can shake the pasta!
4. Count each piece of pasta as you drop them into the bottle. The students should count with you. Shake the bottle and tell them, Look! We’ve made a pasta shaker!
5. Ask the students if they would like to make a pasta shaker. You can use “Yes, please” for very young learners, or “Can I make a pasta shaker?” for older learners.
6. Hand out the bottles to the students. Give 10 fillers to the students one-by-one and help them count as they put the fillers in the bottle.
7. Let them shake! You can invent songs, dances, etc., to make this even more fun!

You can expand later by telling students when to stop shaking (and count to a certain number before resuming their shaking!). This will help them learn to focus on you and wait for their reward.

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Finally, say goodbye to the fillers and bottles. Save your upcycled pasta shakers for the next time!

“Phrase of the Week” for older ESL / EFL learners

In our school, one of our favorite secondary-level activities is the “PHRASE OF THE WEEK!” This is such a fun opportunity to make students laugh, expose them to authentic English and involve them in the class.

I saw this picture on Facebook and it made me realize how perfect puns would be for the “Phrase of the Week”:

By the way, did you know that you can follow our blog on Facebook? Check out https://www.facebook.com/esllessonplanssantaeugenia. That’s ESLLessonPlansSantaEugenia on Facebook!

“Phrase of the Week” is super fun and super easy. All you have to do is google “English idiomatic expressions” to come up with a full database of phrases that will take you through the whole school year.

Every Monday, we give the students the “Phrase of the Week.” You can write it on the blackboard and ask the students to try to guess the meaning. For example, “an arm and a leg.” If it’s very difficult, you can write it in a sentence: “This shirt costs an arm and a leg.” If you have a student guess the meaning, great! If not, you can explain it to students.

A great activity is to ask the students to write their own definition in their “Phrase of the Week” section of their notebooks. Ask for three or four volunteers to write their definitions on the blackboard and then formulate one acceptable class definition. Have them copy the class definition below their own definition in their notebooks.

(If you have extra class time, you can always put up 10 definitions and have the students vote for their favorite! To keep things fair, you can write them or have students exchange notebooks so that the author is a mystery. The student with the most amount of votes can win a prize, like a positive point or a homework pass! This will keep students super motivated to learn the “Phrase of the Week.”)

But don’t start there! Continue incorporating the “Phrase of the Week” throughout the week. Here are a few ways to do that:

• Pop quiz: What’s the phrase of the week?
• Bonus point on exam: Write and explain the phrase of the week.
• Come to class, say hello, call on a student, and ask “What’s the phrase of the week?” immediately.
• If you notice that the class is getting a bit unruly, ask “What’s the phrase of the week?” and have them choral repeat a few times before continuing with the lesson.
• Towards the end of the year, have a contest in groups or individually to see who can write down the most phrases of the week. Give a prize to the winner!
• Come into class and write a phrase of the week in a different way (back to the example of “an arm and a leg,” you can write “This shirt is very expensive.”) Ask the students to say it in a different way, using a phrase of the week.
• Let the students come up with a phrase of the week! Assign each week to a different student and let them present and define the phrase of the week.

This is a great ice breaker activity that will get your students motivated and your class off on the right foot! The bonus? It’s been shown in our classrooms to get students’ attention immediately and quiet them down – quite a feat for Spanish secondary students!

Rewarding Good Behavior (aka Trying to Avoid Bad Behavior)

We’ve all been there: you have such an amazing lesson that you’ve worked on during your entire weekend, you get to class on Monday morning ready to make your students have so much fun that they forget they’re learning, and then one student decides to act up and throws the class behavior out of whack. Ok, for some of us, this sounds like everyday in the classroom!

Young learners are particularly vulnerable to bad behaviors because they are still “learning the rules” of the learning environment. Not only are you teaching them English, but you are also teaching them how to behave in a classroom setting.

There are several types of negative behaviors that young learners often exhibit. One of them is not paying attention to the teacher or listening to his or her instructions. This is often the most difficult one for the teacher, because we feel it is a personal affront to our authority. Perhaps another student prefers to play with and/or distract his or her neighbor instead of looking at the teacher. Yet others will cry non-stop in the classroom, because they miss mommy and daddy, because they didn’t win at an activity, because they are still adjusting to school, because they don’t feel well, because… you get the picture.

The first and most important technique for dealing with negative behavior is to not let it affect you personally. Try not to let these behaviors raise your blood pressure, produce anxiety, or make you angry. (Yes, we all realize that this is easier said than done.) Try to remain cool and calm.

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One of my personal zen moments always happens when I go to a shopping center here in Madrid. Seeing children running, playing, acting insane despite their parents’ desperate please… it all makes me realize that kids are kids, and their favorite “This is boring” statement is not a personal affront to my (ahem, awesome) lesson plan.

Now that we’re all cool as a cucumber, how can we discourage negative classroom behavior? One trick to try is to refrain from punishing negative behaviors, and rather reward positive behaviors.

Here’s how you can reward positive behaviors with young learners.

For very young learners (1-3 years old), you reward by allowing them to participate in really fun activities! Keep their interest in what you are doing and make them participate vocally in order to join in the activity. For example, if you are teaching your students how to wait in the classroom, try using maracas. Make each student ask for a maraca (“A maraca, please” or “Yes, please”) before they can join in on the shaking fun! Then yell STOP! and place your maraca in front of you. Wait for everyone to do the same. Once they all have the maracas in front of them, count 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 and then pick up your maraca and shake to your heart’s content! Repeat the stop and counting several times. This will teach them in a fun way that they should wait their turn, wait for the teacher, and stop and pay attention when the teacher gives the keyword stop. Give a reward to the ones who demonstrate good behavior consistently (a sticker for the first student to stop, etc.).

For students ages 3-5, you can start working on reward systems in order to encourage good behaviors and discourage bad behaviors. One great way to do this is to reward on the spot for good behaviors. Little Marcos is sitting properly in his chair? Say “An applause for Marcos! You’re sitting properly!” and wait five seconds until everyone else catches on and sits properly. Other great ways to reward this age group is with a favorite song (“Wow, you’re all sitting properly! Good job! I’m very happy! Let’s sing…”) or short game. If you have one student who is really messing things up, leave them out of the activity (“Sorry Sergio, but you have to sit properly if you want to play the game.”) The idea is to show them that good behaviors lead to fun!

For students 5-8, one of my favorite good behavior techniques is the No Monkey Business! Poster. 

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At the end of every class, students get to put a sticker on the monkey if they have had good behavior collectively! I laminate copies of this poster for each class. When they get a certain number of stickers (10, 20, whatever you decide) then the class gets a prize! This can be a physical prize – like a new pencil, a rubber, or a piece of candy, if it’s allowed – or a chance to play a special game that they love! You can always use “the Monkey” to quell negative behavior as soon as it pops up (“If you continue, there will be no sticker for the Monkey”). 

I laminate the poster because, if the behavior is truly hideous, I will take a sticker away and make a big deal out of it.

By trying to encourage positive behaviors with rewards and fun activities, you automatically discourage negative behaviors without punishment. Although avoiding punishment forever is unrealistic in a learning environment, if you try to encourage good behavior first, you will find that you are punishing much less!

What is your favorite positive behavior reinforcement technique? Leave us a comment!