English All In

INTRODUCTION

It is a wonder how intensely focused and imaginative children in a Class 1 can be, also when exposed to a new language: They cheerfully speak along with verses and stories, unreservedly open, usually unafraid to utter strange-sounding words and phrases, uncritical and unselfconscious. This will gradually decrease during the next few years and may have 'gone' by the age of 9 or 10.

Most children who have ‘mastered’ their first language will bring a fair amount of language-learning ‘experience’ with them when they enter school! For about six years they have been discovering what people around them were saying (feelings, wishes, commands, explanations), how to string words together (‘Daddy there’! ‘Dog stupid’!). And then there were all those little words with inflexions and endings to explore. Children in an English-speaking country, say, would have had to discover when to use 'an' or 'a' (‘discovering’ that saying *a apple sounds rather like when you have a cold!). Or when an 's' comes after a word, that 'go-ed' needs to become 'went'. And when to say something is the biggest, the laziest. How phrases become meaningful (such as  The postman’s been means he’s come and gone!) 

This kind of ‘working things out’ will go on playing a big part for children learning a new language. And language teachers can build up on the (subconscious) language-learning experience that is already there. 

All this is covered by one word: ‘Grammar’. Grammar is subconscious at first but it is sensed nonetheless as a sort of logic woven into the language. With every step a child takes towards correct use of language it becomes just that little more aware of this logic. 

If we picture a gradually rising line representing growing cognitive powers with increasing age, and a descending line showing the decrease in a child’s natural way of acquiring language the two lines would cross around age 11-12. This would mean there is no need for explicit grammar teaching before then, as it would jolt the children out of their unselfconscious learning style, and that could be really counter-productive!

Most (young) learners will probably grasp the ‘right feel’ of a grammatical ‘rule’, word or expression much more easily after dozens of attempts at using certain structures than from having things explained to them. (Don't we all know from our own child- and parenthood that deliberate teaching to 'speak properly' rarely produced better results any faster?) That is why in Waldorf education the first three years are spent  learning to pronounce and recognize the sounds of the English language by listening to stories and reciting poetry, by practising tongue twisters and singing; from Class 2 everyday classroom conversation (That’s a rat, isn’t it?, Did the rat eat the malt?). From Class 3 role-play (and even irregular verb-forms recited just for the sound); all of this always interspersed with lots of learning activities (Have you got the red pencil?").

Writing will then be introduced from Class 4 in several distinct steps such as copying off the blackboard (exploring and discovering  certain spellings as we proceed) and self-composed texts,  all of which gradually raise children’s awareness of ‘grammar’ (which word, by the way, derives from the Greek meaning ‘having been written’!).

In order to preserve as long as possible their natural learning-style,  all children need rich, appetite-whetting inputs and activities that appeal to their imagination and creativity; activities, stories and verses that have a lot to do with themselves, else they will lose interest.

For this book I have taken traditional verses and rhymes that I have personally used or have seen others use over the years and through which the children can enjoy the sounds and rhythms of the English language as well as be exposed to all kind of grammatical structures to be picked up again later!

Particular attention is given to a phenomenon of the English language: how consonants influence the length of vowels preceding them. Long and short syllables determine rhythm, and rhythm directly affects the way we recite, rhythm controls meaning and emphasis, even determines grammatical structure. And what is so wonderful: awareness of rhythm enables learners to actually hear and feel grammar at work!

As to the actual items chosen the editor of this book and I would like to emphasize our commitment to avoiding materials that maintain normative expectations of behaviour based on gender, culture or ethnicity.

We encourage all teachers to tailor their lesson content to children's interests and needs at any given age. Feel free to make use of any item in this book, but always be on the look-out for new, diverse materials!

I truly hope that the ideas and approaches described in this book will be of help in your day-to-day language-teaching work

CLASS ONE

INNER PREPARATION FOR CLASS ONE

When preparing for a class-one lesson it is wonderful and inspiring to spend a few minutes just reminding oneself of:

How these six-or-seven-year-old children have each had six or seven years of experience with language-learning before they even came to school;

How they came into the world ‘all eyes, all ears, all senses’ as they gazed into the light of the world around them;

How it all started with involuntary arm and leg movements, producing all sorts of noises before learning to stand up, walk and say meaningful things (like feelings and wishes).

Did we notice how babies reacted to spoken language around them?

(One baby I knew laughed out loud when someone happened to say the word ‘Orinoco’).

Did we see how babies concentrate trying to make sense of the world and the people around them? (Was it the beginning of thinking?)

How they soak up language spoken by people around them (even as it drank its mother’s milk)?

How they also soak up moral qualities (behaviours, moods) from their human environment?

How a child connects with the world in more than one way (through its senses, its feelings. its memory, its thoughts?)

Have we ever asked ourselves whether a child’s ‘life’ began only when it was born?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

(from Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood  by William Wordsworth 1770 - 1850)

1. WHAT A CLASS ONE IS LIKE

If, on a walk with a four-year-old, we see a snail, and a little later we see another snail, the four-year-old might say, by way of a reflex, There it is again!  A seven-year-old’s memory, a little more skilled at thinking would very probably realize that it could not have been the same snail. Memory the way we know it, develops between seven and fourteen.

Foreign language classes play a large part in supporting the development of the memory, but here’s the challenge: memory flourishes best when we address the children’s gift of imagination and avoid using cut-and-dried concepts, or giving badly understood language rules and regulations.

During the baby-, toddler- and kindergarten-years children are ‘all eyes and ears’, watching with almost religious intensity every move their peers and adults make. They feel a strong drive to emulate and imitate everything and everybody (a sign of deep involvement and empathy). This is still very noticeable in Class One. (I once wanted to demonstrate what a lawnmower is, and before I knew what was going on, the little ones were ‘lawn-mowering’ all over the classroom!)

Most children in Class One will probably be in kindergarten ‘mode’ still, but we give them nearly a year to arrive in the ‘big school’.

So, at this age, grown-ups’ words and actions still have a profound effect on a child but reprimands, commands usually go unnoticed. (We tell them to make their classroom ‘nice and tidy’ and they go off singing ‘nice and tidy’ and clear up nothing. We say Don’t talk so loud, Don’t open that bottle! but do smaller children fully understand the concept of not? People say the word don’t is the word children have heard most often)!

During Class One, the spoken word does start making an impression but not in the logical way. How we speak, the things we do, the stories we tell are all taken up by the child’s lively imagination. In Class One we see intensively listening children ‘picturing’ the things we say – some children even ‘see’ things we didn’t actually say! (You try asking what happened in the story in the lesson before!)

Children do not picture things in a logical-naturalistic way as older children might. (The cutting open of a wolf’s stomach, for example, to let out the seven goat kids it has eaten causes no logical problems for most smaller children).

And yet Class-One children understand more than we think. In order to ‘understand’ us they ‘read’ our faces, ‘study’ the look in our eyes, imitate our gestures and movements. They understand as much from the way we say things as through the actual words we use (and yet they often have an uncanny gift for word-perfect memory that even imitates the intonations and accent of the person who spoke).

By the way: It was interesting to discover that Class-One children like the idea of ‘challenge’! You try to get them to say yes with Is this the door (when it is the blackboard) and you won’t catch them out! And, when one day, I asked a boy in Class One what they had been doing in school, he commented: Our teacher is treating us like beginners!

2. BEGINNING THE LESSON / DIDACTIC CONSIDERATIONS

There are of course thousands of ways of beginning the lesson. This is an example –  just to give an idea. The teacher wishes Class One a good morning (first speaking, then humming, then singing these words):

Good morning, Good morning!

Oh, what a sunny morning.

We’ll work and play and laugh all day,

This sunny morning.

or if you want a verse for when it’s raining:

Pitter, patter, pitter, patter!

Listen to the rain.

Pitter, patter, pitter, patter!

On the window pane.

Finger Plays

Finger Plays are action rhymes performed with just the fingers. The texts are spoken by the whole class in chorus using the five fingers

(actually four fingers and a thumb) as actors:

Where is Thumbkin? (Knock - knock - knock!)

Where is Thumbkin?

(The sound of a huge sigh, somebody waking up and stretching.)

Thumbkin sleepily says:

Here I am. Who are you?

How are you today, sir? / madam?

Thumbkin (awake): Very well, thank you!

The four fingers in this verse are Pointer, Middleman, Ringman, Pinkie.

Where is Thumbkin  can be done in desk pairs later and it can be sung to the tune of Frère Jaques. They fingers can also have other names:

Peter Pointer...Bobby Big ...Ruby Ring ...Tiny Tim

Sammy Thumb

(Index finger knocks on closed fist).

Sammy Thumb, Sammy Thumb!

Knock, knock, knock. Are you there?

(Sammy doesn't answer because he's asleep).

Louder: Sammy Thumb, Sammy Thumb!

Knock, knock, knock. Are you there?

(In a sleepy voice): Mmmm, I'm asleeeep ...

(Louder still): Sammy Thumb, Sammy Thumb, are you there? (Sammy Thumb pops up out of fist. (Sleepily he says):

Here I am! What can I do?

(or: How do you do?)

Variant: Sammy Thumb, Sammy Thumb, are you there?

Thumb pops up out of fist.

Sleepily: Here I am! What can I do?

3. SPEAKING WITH FINGERS, HANDS, ARMS AND LEGS

A Finger Play improves the manual dexterity and coordination as well as firing