Teaching English to Young Learners

Summary

Willy Renandya discusses effective principles for teaching English to young learners, sharing insights from his experience at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He emphasizes five key principles: rich language exposure, engaged learning, meaningful practice, fluency development, and cultural incorporation. Donna Lim complements these ideas by illustrating their practical application using Singaporean primary education systems, particularly through a shared book approach that replicates the benefits of bedtime stories. This holistic approach fosters an interactive and student-centered classroom environment, highlights the importance of repetition for fluency, and incorporates cultural contexts to foster global awareness.

Highlights

• Willy shares his expertise from NTU Singapore on teaching English to young learners 👩‍🏫
• The importance of exposing students to rich, meaningful English input daily 🌞
• Fostering a fun and engaging classroom to ensure deep and lasting learning 🎓
• Relevance of cultural context in teaching language to provide global perspectives 🌐
• Donna Lim demonstrates the shared book approach in Singaporean classrooms for effective learning 📖

Key Takeaways

• Immerse students in English daily to develop implicit language knowledge 📚
• Engagement is crucial for deep learning – no engagement, no learning 🌟
• Meaningful practice contextualizes grammar and vocabulary for young learners 🧠
• Fluency is developed through repeated exposure and practice, not just new material 🚀
• Incorporating local and international culture enriches language learning experiences 🌍

Overview

Willy Renandya, a teacher at Nanyang Technological University, shared his insights on teaching English to young learners. His focus was on five fundamental principles vital for teaching: providing rich language input, ensuring student engagement, offering meaningful practice, developing fluency, and incorporating cultural elements into lessons.

Rich language exposure ensures that students are constantly surrounded by practical and engaging linguistic examples. Willy stresses that daily immersive English experiences are crucial in helping students internalize the language, especially at a young age, where developing implicit knowledge is more beneficial than purely explicit learning.

Donna Lim from Singapore adds depth to Willy’s theoretical perspectives through practical application. She describes the shared book approach, which mirrors the intimate and engaging dynamics of bedtime reading. This method not only supports language acquisition by promoting repeated readings and interaction but also ties in cultural narratives to expand student understanding of global cultures.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction and University Information The chapter starts with an introduction by the speaker, who expresses pleasure in being among English teachers from around the world. The speaker briefly mentions their affiliation with Nanyang Technological University, located in Singapore, and extends an invitation to visit if one happens to be in Singapore.
• 01:30 - 08:00: Principles of Language Teaching The chapter discusses the principles of language teaching, touching upon aspects of language education within a faculty often referred to as the School of Education or National Institute of Education. There's mention of casual interactions like campus tours and meals, hinting at the social and informal aspects of educational environments.
• 09:30 - 21:00: Engaged Learning The chapter titled 'Engaged Learning' introduces the significance of teacher education in Singapore. The speaker, presumably an educator, emphasizes their institution as the premier teacher education school in Singapore, implying it's the sole option for aspiring teachers. These individuals must attend this school and learn not only from the speaker but also from faculty members like Donna. The chapter seems to set the stage for a session focused on teacher training, with a promise of straightforward content delivery.
• 24:00 - 30:00: Meaningful Language Practice The chapter focuses on important principles for teaching language, especially to young children and Young Learners.
• 30:00 - 37:00: Approaches to Language Teaching The chapter discusses approaches to language teaching, with a focus on how English is taught in Singaporean classrooms. It emphasizes five key principles that are crucial for teaching, applicable to both young and older children. The first of these principles is introduced in the transcript.
• 37:00 - 43:00: Fluency Development In the chapter titled 'Fluency Development', the focus is on the importance of daily exposure to the English language for students. It emphasizes the necessity for students to see and hear the language regularly, ensuring they are exposed to a sufficient quantity of meaningful and interesting language content. The chapter suggests immersing students in language daily to enhance learning, and hints at further elaboration on these concepts later.
• 43:00 - 49:00: Cultural Integration in Language Teaching The chapter emphasizes the crucial role of engaged learning in language teaching, distinguishing between teaching and actual learning. It highlights the teacher's responsibility to ensure students are not just passive recipients but are actively involved, paying attention, and emotionally and cognitively engaged with the lesson material.
• 65:00 - 69:00: Conclusion and Summary The chapter discusses three key principles in teaching: providing meaningful practice, fluency development, and incorporating culture into teaching. It emphasizes the importance of meaningful practice for students, the significance of fluency development in language teaching for both young and older learners, and the role of culture in daily teaching, including both local and broader cultural contexts.
• 70:30 - 93:00: Q&A Session The chapter discusses the principles of teaching languages to young children, emphasizing the importance of immersing students in rich language environments. It also refers to the Input Theory by Stephen Krashen to support this approach.

Teaching English to Young Learners Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 very much for the introduction ladies and gentlemen it's always a pleasure to be among colleagues teachers of English from many different places in the world before I get started let me just very quickly mention about my University this is the name of my University nanyang Technological University it's located in Singapore if you happen to be in Singapore please make sure that you
• 00:30 - 01:00 drop me a line so that I can take you to a campus tour free of charge completely free plus lunch thrown in as well lunch at the ni canteen is on me but if you want something more fancy than that we can but you have to pay for that not us not me I belong to the faculty of Education or some other places it's called School of Education and locally is known as the National Institute of Education the only
• 01:00 - 01:30 teacher training education in Singapore and that's why I call this the best teacher education institution in Singapore there's only one if you want to want to become a teacher in Singapore you have to go to the school of education and you have to study with me and also with Donna and with some other faculty members there today's session very straightforward I will start off by sharing with you
• 01:30 - 02:00 some of the most important principles for language teaching in particular for teaching young children in particular for teaching Young Learners after that Donna my colleague who has had a lot of experience teaching young children in school and also now she's doing you know pre-service training and also at my University and she will be sharing with you what actually happens in the primary school classroom in
• 02:00 - 02:30 Singapore so how teachers in Singapore actually do the teaching of English in in the classroom okay now Hira five things that I want to share with you five principles that I think are so so important whether you teach young children or whether you teach older children I think you can't run away from these five principles the first one is the principle that says
• 02:30 - 03:00 that you need to make sure that when students learn English they need to see the language every day they need to hear the language every day they need to have sufficient quantity being exposed to them you need to immerse your students in meaningful interesting uh language on a daily basis I think that one is very straightforward but I'm going to ex to elaborate a little bit more about that uh in the
• 03:00 - 03:30 next slides the next one is the importance of engaged learning I think we all know that teaching and learning are two different things in the classroom when we present a lesson it doesn't mean that the students are always you know in a position to learn things that we share with them so our main job as a teacher is making sure that the students are fully engaged they are paying attention they're emotionally engaged they are cognitively engaged and things like that
• 03:30 - 04:00 the next principle is something that you have heard again and again the importance of providing meaningful practice to your students the next bit is on fluency development and I'll explain later why fluency is such an important Concept in teaching language to Young Learners or to older Learners and the last one is about culture and how culture can be incorporated can be infused in our teaching on a daily basis whether it's local culture whether it's
• 04:00 - 04:30 International culture and things like that let me get started with the first one the first principle says that as a language teacher or when we teach young children in particular we need to make sure that the students get immersed to very very rich language if you are looking for a theory uh they will support the the principle I would suggest that you look at the uh input Theory by Stephen crashing
• 04:30 - 05:00 in the old days it was known as their comprehensible input hypothesis but today is known as the optimal input hypothesis the word optimal means two things number one the quantity of language exposure will have to be there and number two the quality as well the quality means that the language that the students are exposed to uh has you know provides a wide range of instances of how language grammatical structures vocabulary and things like that are
• 05:00 - 05:30 actually used in real context in real situations so the input will have to be optimal in terms of quantity and also in terms of quality yeah now for your students to want to listen and read to you know interest to to to language input the uh the listening materials and the listen the reading materials they have to be interesting and also easy easy here is defined at
• 05:30 - 06:00 their level and sometimes you may be surprised that the students need to hear the language slightly below their level as well slightly above is okay too but I think most of the time what we need to do is to make sure that our students get a lot of exposure to comprehensible easy language and I'll explain to you a bit later why easy language is important again so the key message is we need to provide students with a lot of exposure
• 06:00 - 06:30 daily exposure how much exposure every day 15 minutes maybe 20 or maybe half an hour yeah on a daily basis every day every week every month and within one year you will be able to see a lot of interesting language development that is happening the theory behind this is that when we teach language we want to help to help our students develop not just explicit
• 06:30 - 07:00 knowledge of the language explicit detail knowledge about how Southern grammar grammatical rules function in the English language but also in terms of how this language become part of their uh you know uh linguistic system that allows them to produce language quickly fluently and without too much effort and this is known as implicit knowledge of the language
• 07:00 - 07:30 so one key takeaway of today's session actually is this when we are working with young children we want to make sure that we spend a lot more time helping our students develop implicit intuitive language intuitive knowledge of the language now here is a nice quote that I often use to support you know what I what I'm saying about the importance of implicit knowledge now the quote comes from a book an
• 07:30 - 08:00 academic book on second language acquisition and this is what it says very clearly I'm going to read it to you very slowly the ability to produce language relatively easily for communicative purposes draws heavily I think we need to underline that draws heavily on implicit knowledge of the language not so much on the ability to tell you the rules of the grammatical structures
• 08:00 - 08:30 in the English language for example what is a past tense for students may be able to explain to you the past tense is for one two three four five purposes I think that is not as useful as implicit knowledge because this is the kind of knowledge that will help the students to actually be able to understand the language listening and reading but also be able to produce the language for you know speaking and writing purposes yeah so the key takeaway is implicit
• 08:30 - 09:00 intuitive knowledge of the language so where does which language come from obviously you are probably when you are teaching when you are a teacher when you are a t e y l teacher then you are a great source of language input for your students so my advice is that use English as much as possible not maybe not 100 but as
• 09:00 - 09:30 much as possible and make sure more importantly that that your language is comprehensible that your language is easy for your children to understand so you are playing a very very important job here especially at the early stage of learning yeah if language is an issue for your students you might want to use gestures you might want to use facial expressions you might want to use props whatever that you can use to help your students understand what you are thinking what
• 09:30 - 10:00 you are saying in the classroom the second source of language input is from teaching materials traditionally we use course books yeah but the course books may be a little bit Limited in terms of quantity remember what I said earlier about optimal input optimal input has to do with providing students with a lot of language so cost book alone crossword is good but it's not sufficient if you are relying solely on course
• 10:00 - 10:30 folks I think we'll be doing uh you know this service to our students because they need a lot more exposure to language input so what you can do is to provide additional materials usually stories printed materials as well as materials from the internet you know digital materials like this one the ugly duckling curly hair and there's a lot out there that are available for your students to access and your job as a teacher is probably to
• 10:30 - 11:00 provide students uh you know websites or other learning resources that provide hopefully free you know stories for your students the kind of stories that are interesting kind of stories that are useful relevant and easy to understand for your students at home now this is an ideal situation in Singapore this is what parents are encouraged to do I don't know about other places but you
• 11:00 - 11:30 know if you can encourage the parents to also provide additional language input at home I think that would be a big plus for young children's language development just spending like five or ten minutes reading aloud a story or bedtime stories before the kids go to bed I think that has been shown to be extremely useful in increasing in further boosting children's language literacy development so that's principle number one
• 11:30 - 12:00 so principle number one again says that input is of utmost importance without input nothing can happen I think I can assure you that input is probably the number one thing that you need to remember making sure that is your students receive sufficient optimal input on a daily basis Point number two is about engaged learning I think I mentioned briefly early on yeah teaching and learning are two different things we
• 12:00 - 12:30 may be the most exciting you know person when it comes to teaching in the classroom but at the end of the day it is the students who do the learning and the thinking today is that unless the students are fully engaged learning is not likely to happen optimally in the language classroom so essentially no engagement no learning or only a small amount of learning or if you want to say that there is learning happening the kind of learning is likely to be very
• 12:30 - 13:00 superficial very light very superficial and very fragile as well the kind of learning that happens and immediately after the students will just forget what they have learned from you so the big question perhaps for us is this I think you should be asking this question yourself you know from time to time you know keeping in mind uh that that the students will have to be engaged throughout your lesson uh I've I've read somewhere in the literature that a very good teacher an
• 13:00 - 13:30 Effective Teacher is somebody who is able to engage their students to engage 90 of their students 90 of the time in other words there's very little down time during the learning process 90. why 90 is because 90 is good enough it's not possible for you to engage 100 of your students all the time so 90 of the time ninety percent of your students should be feeling engaged
• 13:30 - 14:00 now here is the reason why I am emphasizing the importance of Engagement student engagement during the learning process I came across this book some years back the book was written by two very senior Educators in the U.S what happened was they travel all around the USA they visited schools after schools and they observe lessons hundreds and thousands of lessons with one big question in mind and the
• 14:00 - 14:30 question they had in mind is this our students actually engage in the classroom interesting isn't it that one big question this is what they found good news only a small number of students are off task so off task means very little learning is happening in the classroom yeah of task means they are not paying attention they are not listening they are doing things that are not that they're not supposed to be doing in the classroom of
• 14:30 - 15:00 task Behavior what about the students who are on task good news 91 of the students are on task they seem to be learning they seem to be paying attention pay attention to what I'm using they seem to be paying attention but are they actually fully engaged the answer is no only about six percent of the students are fully engaged the 91 of the students are able to tell you
• 15:00 - 15:30 what they are doing if they ask you what they are doing when they are on task they will be able to tell you hey I'm doing gram exercises hey I'm doing this on my teacher if you go further and ask them do you know what you are learning they won't be able to tell you if you ask them further do you know what are the success indicators of your learning they may not be able to tell you so in other words they are not very very engaged they are on task they are doing things for the sake of doing
• 15:30 - 16:00 things they're doing things because the teachers ask them to do it not because they know why the reason why they are doing it very interesting I thought as an educator we need to keep asking ourselves this question are my students fully engaged in the classroom a quiz for you look at the two pictures here picture one on the left hand side and picture two on the right hand side which of the two classes do you think where
• 16:00 - 16:30 the students are more engaged picture one or picture two very good picture two yes look at the faces of these people my best guess is that the students on the left hand side are probably more on task than engaged yeah maybe they are doing exercises grammar drills or grammar exercises this one definitely the students are really really engaged not happening in the classroom outside the classroom they want to spend time they continue reading
• 16:30 - 17:00 although the config the the curfew time has already been you know announced by their parents they still continue reading yeah foreign how do we apply principle number two engage learning in the language classroom whether you're working with young children or with older children look at the picture on the left hand side I think the picture tells you that the students will need to be engaged in
• 17:00 - 17:30 terms of their emotion they have the heart there represents the feeling they have to be emotionally engaged effectively engaged the head look at the picture of the head I think the students will have to be mentally cognitively engaged as well they need to do some thinking the doing thing is very important the other hands represent the doing things so the sins will have to be doing things in the classroom as well especially young kids they want to jump around they
• 17:30 - 18:00 want to dance they want to sing they want to move about in a classroom so making sure that your students are engaged in that way and then the big circle represents the social dimension of learning yeah working together singing together doing work together with their friends I think that is part of you know uh social engagement now that would be the last one the ability to share their work with their friends with their peers or even at home with their siblings and their parents and things like that
• 18:00 - 18:30 so if you want to truly engage your students you need to worry about you need to think about how you can engage them emotionally most important is the uh the feeling making sure that the students are there with you they are happy they're enjoying the learning that happens they find the examples that you gave in the classroom being very interesting and things like that let me show you some examples this is the first example yeah a very typical sentence is that
• 18:30 - 19:00 teachers often use when teaching certain grammatical features in the classroom a present tense examples of the present tense of my mother goes to the market every day is that something that is interesting and exciting not really I mean you know the kids will be thinking teacher why are you telling me things that I know this is what my mother does every day and that's very boring the cat is chased by the dog please stay away from cats
• 19:00 - 19:30 and dogs I mean leave them alone I think we kids are no longer interested in cats and dogs we went to the zoo yesterday boring yeah so maybe you can maybe you can find something that is more appealing emotionally let's try this this is supposed to be anecdote please laugh at the end okay if you don't laugh at the end then it's going to be a problem now here is a conversation very interesting sentences Camilla uh Robbie
• 19:30 - 20:00 if you have five dollars and ask your mom to give you another five how many dollars would you have an interesting lesson here how many dollars would you have this is like a conditional Clause a conditional sentence yeah and Robbie says five dollars no more no less and the teacher is a bit upset and says you don't know your maths and Robbie responds you don't know my mom so instances like this will light up you
• 20:00 - 20:30 know will will color you know the the lesson in a way that the students will find wow teacher this is very interesting now here is another example this is about daddy and and the child how come you fail your grammar test past tense yeah you failed your grammar test and David said sheepishly absent that what do you mean absent you're absent the day before you on the day of the
• 20:30 - 21:00 test or before no no no no dad so what's the problem it's the girl who sits next to me she was absent on that day and that's why I flunked the test so there's a lot of very interesting examples that you can bring into the classroom if you are looking for some resources that happen that have been made available by people uh try this one Grammar with laughter I
• 21:00 - 21:30 think you will enjoy reading and using a lot of very interesting examples on that book it's called Grammar with laughter book one book two book three I hope I hope I have time to write book number four and book Numbers program with laughter now here is a task I think many of you may have seen tasks like this a task that requires a little bit of thinking a little bit of problem solving I think kids will enjoy doing things like this they are solving problem they're making
• 21:30 - 22:00 use of their thinking but at the same time they learn some language functions as well yeah I'm sure you have seen something like this it's a man here who wants to cross the uh River but the boat is very small and he can only you know transport one of the uh whether it is the Cabbage the goat or the fox at any one time because the boat is very very small so the problem is if he leaves behind the fox and the Goat I think the fox is
• 22:00 - 22:30 going to Devour the goat if you leave the cabbage with the goats what's going to happen the goat is going to eat the cabbage and he doesn't want that to happen so kids can work this out you know as they are thinking working together their friends I think they're also learning a lot of language in the process so some thinking is involved learning by doing is a big thing for young children I think in Singapore this is what teachers often do
• 22:30 - 23:00 when they teach a certain language features commonly found in text types like instruction or instructional you know like a recipe for example yeah like how to make a sandwich I think teachers will ask or will actually bring ingredients for making a sandwich and they will get the kids to actually do it as the teachers are teaching certain language features that are commonly
• 23:00 - 23:30 found in this kind of text yeah when you describe the procedure for example you need to make sure that there's a very nice and orderly sequence something has to come first before something else and the use of nouns you know countable nouns and uncountable nouns are also can be highlighted in the process so again the thinking here is is this engagement is important and we can do a lot more to engage our students in the classroom during the
• 23:30 - 24:00 learning process linguistically cognitively effectively and also socially and kinesthetically as well making sure that the students are moving about doing things if they sit for 10 minutes listening to you of 15 minutes listening to you I don't think a lot of learning is likely to happen there the kids who just get bored listening to you next one this is another big principle
• 24:00 - 24:30 where language learning is concerned the importance of providing meaningful language practice meaningful language practice how we can present grammar and vocabulary in a more meaningful way the reason is very simple our brains have been designed to attend to meaning not to forms so unless forms are presented in meaningful language I think our brains
• 24:30 - 25:00 will just not be paying attention to whatever language features that you are presenting to the students and that brings up another important issue of context we need to make sure that the context is always there when we present language features like grammar or vocabulary now if you look at the literature on language teaching
• 25:00 - 25:30 you will have seen uh you know maybe it's tens or even hundreds of different ways of teaching language but to me to me I think there are three main approaches that we can that can help us understanding how help us understand how language is taught you know by language teachers in different parts of the world the first approach is known as the part approach now the part approach actually
• 25:30 - 26:00 is an approach to language teaching where language is first broken up into small tiny units and then these small tiny units are presented systematically and these language units are then explained very carefully and explicitly to our students one day at a time one week at a time yeah
• 26:00 - 26:30 now I'm sure you have you you remember what the structural approach is all about I think the structural approach basically is what I would call the path approach to language teaching because you are concerned about presenting language in a way in your opinion in our opinion in a way that is digestible for the students so you break it up the small points and then you teach them one at a time in a step-by-step manner yeah that is a part approach to language teaching
• 26:30 - 27:00 the other approach which is which is you know a complete uh reaction to the first approach is known as the whole approach or the whole language approach if you like the natural approach that you may have heard before very popular recipences uh is is is basically saying that well language is not supposed to be broken up I think language will have to be presented as all a story is a story present the whole
• 27:00 - 27:30 story don't break it up into sentences don't break it up into the first paragraph the second paragraph the third paragraph or the grammar points in each of the paragraph this present language holistically and you know allow the students to enjoy the language for a period of time and voila they will learn something they will pick up the language they will develop their proficiency so this is the second approach the third approach is this one
• 27:30 - 28:00 it's known as the whole part whole approach the whole is presented the context is there the meaning is there the purpose of the text is presented the audience is there already included in the text and everything is in there the whole is presented first and then somewhere along the line in the middle as you go through the hole you may want to highlight one or two maybe three important language features
• 28:00 - 28:30 very different from the part approach here in the part approach the hole is broken up first in the small units and then the small units are presented one at a time but in the whole approach its context is the overriding principle understand first enjoy the language first make sure that you can relate to the language in meaningful ways and then somewhere along the line you may want to teach your students some of the key language features
• 28:30 - 29:00 for Focus instruction maybe the spelling maybe the pronunciation maybe certain words that are very important that appear in that particular story and then you don't stop there but then you put the parts back into the hole again so that the students can see again oh okay that's that's how the whole is created and that is how Parts can contribute to a richer understanding of the whole this is the approach that
• 29:00 - 29:30 Donna Lim my esteemed colleague we'll be sharing with you later on this is how it is done in the Singapore classroom yeah whole and pot and hole locally in Singapore is known as Stella but essentially is a story based pedagogy also known as shared book reading also known as interactive reading also known as dialogic reading so through Reading
• 29:30 - 30:00 retelling the story and through interactions with the students you sort of bring the students to understand the story but at the same time somewhere along the line you might want to highlight some of the important language features to your students very different from the path approach now this approach says that yes language features are important but language features will have to be presented in meaningful context in meaningful language
• 30:00 - 30:30 this is what usually happens the classroom the teacher reading together reading aloud in a very interactive manner with the students more about this with Donna later on that kind of reading that kind of lessons that happen in the classroom is known as supported reading or supported literacy activities in the classroom yeah gradually after a while the students will be able to develop
• 30:30 - 31:00 Independence in Reading so at some point in their primary school education they will begin to be introduced to books that they can read silently independently on their own so that is the whole literacy program in Singapore which Dr Donna Lim is going to explore in her presentation later okay so I've just presented three big approaches you can just
• 31:00 - 31:30 show me with the show of hand which approach best describes your teaching or your friends teaching one two or three just show me your fingers one two or three [Music] one two or three ah yes Camilla one Carmella is number one is number three good I hope after today's presentation you will start exploring the possibility
• 31:30 - 32:00 of teaching language in a more meaningful manner teaching language to young children in a more balanced manner where language is presented as whole but at the same time you play an important role of teaching language features grammar vocabulary spelling pronunciation to your students in the middle of your lesson yeah this one is very easy actually the next principle says that fluency development is extremely
• 32:00 - 32:30 important where language acquisition is concerned interestingly though what fluency often refers to speaking fluency the word fluency often refers to the end the product of learning my students are fluent or not fluent and today what I want to share with you is that fluency not only refers to speak influency and writing fluency but it refers to reading fluency and listening
• 32:30 - 33:00 fluency the ability to hear words quickly the ability to read words quickly and with with good understanding I think that is what I mean by fluency the ability to do things quickly and easily and effortlessly now this one according to pollination fluency has for many years been neglected in our teaching neglected means teachers are
• 33:00 - 33:30 always teachers mean well but they always think about okay what is next what is new points new language points new learning points that I want to introduce next week what are new learning language points that I want to introduce to my students the week after always thinking about something new and we forget that language learning requires that the students see the same words the same spelling the same pronunciation again and again and again every single day so that they can do it
• 33:30 - 34:00 quickly and effortlessly in other words so that they can be able they can do it fluently so it's a serious neglect according to Paul Nation he also observes that there's minimal recycling of learn items minimal recycling we don't recycle a lot we are thinking always in terms of what is new next week what is new next week yeah nothing wrong with that but I think
• 34:00 - 34:30 we also have to be mindful that language learning happens when the students get a chance to do things again and again I think this picture is telling the guy on the left hand side is the trainee and the guy on the right hand side is the coach or the teacher yeah look at the guy on the left-hand side I think he already knows how to do it but he keeps on hitting the ball hitting the ball again and again and again until he becomes really really fluent really really very good at hitting the ball not
• 34:30 - 35:00 just hitting the ball but placing the ball at the right place on the other side of the Court with a higher degree of speed and with a higher degree of accuracy as well that to me is fluency and that is very often missing in our teaching yeah fluency is so so important in other words I think we know the big words of practice practice practice practice makes please continue doing our practice mix
• 35:00 - 35:30 turn on your audio please perfect perfect yes practice makes perfect yes and that can only happen if we provide students the opportunity to see those same words the same spelling the same grammatical features uh you know very frequently so do a lot of this frequent listening frequent reading frequent writing frequent speaking if you're looking for a name for this
• 35:30 - 36:00 method of teaching is known as the again and again method very easy again and again you simply have to do it again and again and again and I thought teachers are very good at doing things I also hear a conversation between two you know married couple some some years back one is married to a doctor this is an anecdote the other one is married to a teacher
• 36:00 - 36:30 what happens if you are married to a doctor a doctor will tell you yitza please don't do that and you know that will make you that is very unhealthy that will increase your blood pressure I think you need to do this but if you're married to a teacher and he is married to a teacher when you do things yeah yes and your husband will say it's a very good do it again do it again so the again and again method is is a very powerful method yeah
• 36:30 - 37:00 it reinforces the learning that took place uh the day before or the year before finally people principle number five very straightforward local culture yeah this refers to ways of speaking basically when it comes to language learning how do we present ideas how do we greet people how do we say story uh and things like that greetings for example in Singapore or in China maybe I think people are used to saying when they meet
• 37:00 - 37:30 somebody it's have you eaten yet instead of how are you instead of you know uh other usual greetings that are usually associated with the use of English in some countries in the world have you eaten well I was I was a bit surprised actually when I first visited my dentist some years back and when I walked into this the office the dentist asked me hey have you eaten yet I was a bit taken aback yeah yeah good dinner
• 37:30 - 38:00 terms of address yes Mr is good to know but at the same time locally in Singapore for example people will call me uncle and people will call Donna Auntie right Donna Uncle Auntie and other terms of address honorifics in Thailand I think we have some uh members of the audience in Thailand if you if you if you if you
• 38:00 - 38:30 speak to somebody you have to use either car or crop goodbye car if you're a woman you have to put Kai at the end because car sounds very polite if if you are a man then you have to say goodbye crop uh in the Philippines correct me if I'm wrong you have to put po at the end Camila correct yes agree with him yes please say Paul agree with you Paul strange
• 38:30 - 39:00 sounds strange but that's what you do right yes yes I agree Paul yes which is very you know what they use in the Philippines contact in Indonesia if you're addressing somebody like me you have to put pop at the end Puck is like a nice term of a dress honorifics that you have to use how about English in English maybe hey you instead of hey crap hey bro oh hey dude
• 39:00 - 39:30 I'm not sure you want to teach our kids you know to say Hey you because that sounds a bit actually a bit rude In some cultures in the region uh I think we are also aware now that English is now used as a global language so I think it's also important for us to introduce some of the cultural conventions of the target language culture what UK people do what Australian people do and things like
• 39:30 - 40:00 that and what they don't do but we also need to introduce the international culture you know the culture of the Japanese people the culture of people in the Philippines India and many other places uh in the world I think teaching this cultural uh you know values will help our students to really really become a global citizen and they will be able to understand what is important what is seen as you know
• 40:00 - 40:30 Universal values by people from all over the world the importance of sharing respect for example the importance of showing honesty compassion you know kindness and things like that I think recently there's there's quite a bit of discussion uh about the importance of teaching our students the language of peace or peace education or peace Linguistics actually
• 40:30 - 41:00 which I think is very important if we don't want to have another War you know happening in the near future we have had enough Wars in in the past ladies and gentlemen wrapping up yitza the first principle checking if you have been listening to me the first principle is a oh sorry Rich language very good you got that right number two is uh engagement engage
• 41:00 - 41:30 learning number three meaningful practice very good I think you have excellent next one is fluency development and the last one is yes culture yes and ladies and gentlemen there are many other principles that you're going to explore what I've just shared with you and just five that to me are the most important when you teach young children now here is one question that I have for you to think about if you were to add
• 41:30 - 42:00 one additional principle for teaching English to Young Learners what would that be yeah give it a thought you might want to write it down on the in the in the chat box or later you may want to turn on your audio and share you know your principle with the rest of the audience today think about one additional principle that you think is so important when you're working with young children
• 42:00 - 42:30 learning English as a second or as a foreign language thank you very much for listening I think you will be thank you and thank you and uh gives a round of applause for Willie you
• 42:30 - 43:00 okay everyone if you have some question or some thought for power wheelie we have times before we go to another presentation yes there's one here from two things yes yes two Ting is a graduate student currently studying with me in my University a bright brilliant student from China from Beijing yeah not from Beijing China
• 43:00 - 43:30 yes do you think you have any questions I just entered sorry not a problem yeah yes I think I saw two people raising their hands it's a roof oh no yeah
• 43:30 - 44:00 I think because we can only see one screen could you put your question in the chat please or you can say your name and then ask directly if you like to yes that'd be good too yes yes I'm happy to respond to your questions I was curious about um local culture at
• 44:00 - 44:30 the end respect for local culture yes to me in my context uh teaching English in Japan it's kind of tricky yes and my students definitely want to call me Ruthie teacher which to them is respectful and it's lovely but it's really unnatural um but to them that's their local culture okay right I also had an assistant recently who came and it was uh really
• 44:30 - 45:00 interesting she was quite upsetted about little things like that she said that's not natural um to her meaning if they had gone abroad to America or Canada they would be laughed at yes how are you today and they would say I'm happy until then we had encouraged that but this is no no yes I'm happy today I think that's a nice way of responding to
• 45:00 - 45:30 questions like how are you they're very honest and it's not exactly natural but um could you elaborate a little bit on uh yes yes Donna please share your experience about how teachers address you in the classroom most of them I think they will still because our culture we are still a little bit more traditional so they'll still call us um uh Dr so and so but
• 45:30 - 46:00 um some of this if you were and maybe growing now would call us by me what about your young school children yes primary school children yes and our secondary they will still address um using miss or misses so and so yeah yeah but still in that culture yeah yes yes uh interesting question Ruth but
• 46:00 - 46:30 increasingly I think there is a wider acceptance for students to make use of their local cultures to express themselves in the new language that they are learning using their local culture it may not sound very natural to us because we are not used to but increasingly as the number of speakers of English in Japan you know go up a great deal I think eventually we'll have to accept that that's interesting yes yes when you ask how are you today hey I'm happy today
• 46:30 - 47:00 I know it's it's it sounds a bit weird but you know if like one million people say that I think we'll begin to realize that hey that's a very nice response actually I'm feeling peaceful today how are you today I'm feeling peaceful today yeah I know what you mean when when people ask you how are you today I mean that you don't really want to know how they feel it's it's just a form of greeting isn't it my kids really want to tell you exactly happens yes yeah we like to let that happen so
• 47:00 - 47:30 right if you ask yitza for example uh the uh traditional greeting which people often use in Indonesia they don't say how are you but they will ask you where are you going right it's a yeah something like that yeah somebody understood they'll say hey where are you going they're not really interested in finding out where you are going actually but that's how they greet each other where are you going instead of how are you very rare yeah occasionally
• 47:30 - 48:00 we say how are you but most of the time is where are you going you get very upset with people you know if people ask you where are you going you know in Indonesia but if you learn barcel Indonesia I think that's what you need to do thank you what about not language but uh Customs like when I first began teaching in Japan it really upset me when boys walked into the classroom wearing a hat yes
• 48:00 - 48:30 that was for Hooligans where I grew up but no matter how try how hard I explained to them it meant nothing to them they were cold they wanted the Hat um young young children or teenagers oh it's usually always Elementary School oh really interesting yeah but but I I think this is that uh this is an interesting point also because culture can be a barrier to their access to the teaching as well so I think when when Billy was bringing
• 48:30 - 49:00 this up um even for stories that we do in our class uh the the stories that we bring in um uh sometimes we get them to link up or connect with the stories also because of the uh the cultural values that we share and that's one of the connect points later on I'll use the story to show that as well um so that that story could be in an international culture for example and overseas not not a Singaporean way of
• 49:00 - 49:30 life but um we're using other Universal things in order to help them connect and therefore help them access other Tech which brings it back to that principle of Rich language connect bringing it back making it accessible to them yes good any other thoughts from the audience there's a lot of audience here a lot of people here from different places been very shy
• 49:30 - 50:00 foreign even for our local schools we also um now do commission some books to be written locally so that they also can uh they also can read books that reflect their lives now as well not all so there's both like your local culture and International College culture
• 50:00 - 50:30 um books that are also introduced in the classroom yeah because traditionally it was always we didn't have a lot of local books so traditionally it was always western books to the kids and sometimes for some of them it's it's too foreign yes that's why the need for localization that Singapore again is a very small country and not that many writers so if you're interested in becoming you know writers in Singapore please come and
• 50:30 - 51:00 join us okay no more questions okay I think you have your questions I think Donna will exemplify will demonstrate how you know the five principles also that I've shared with you are reflected in the actual day-to-day lessons that happen in
• 51:00 - 51:30 primary school education in uh in Singapore Donna has had 10 years of experience teaching young children in school unlike me I've never taught young children so I pretend to know about teaching young children I don't actually Donna is the expert in that area but right now she is also teaching people teachers or people who want to become uh teachers of Young Learners in my institution so she has got both
• 51:30 - 52:00 you know experience of teaching young children and experience of preparing teachers who want to become teachers of Young Learners so it's an ideal you know mixture of somebody with a lot of a very rich experience in teaching yes I'm back to you okay so uh the next one is will be from Donna and as I really was saying about that experience and we were talking before about this which makes it very interesting to know her
• 52:00 - 52:30 uh experience in teaching young learner and how it will convey in the principle that I really have said so let's hear it from Donna and let's learn some more then yeah I don't know thank you so much thank you for this opportunity to to spend it with all of you exploring uh one of the best topics ever right teaching English to Young Learners um okay I'll Jump Right In okay so my part will be of the Singapore
• 52:30 - 53:00 practices that we are bringing out and um okay so let me just give you a bit of background before we move into it um so in Singapore our medium instruction yeah the the main media about construction is in English itself in our primary education is compulsory and this ranges uh for kids from seven years to about 12 years of age they were in a multi-ethnic society and
• 53:00 - 53:30 um right now we are slightly still a bit L2 dominant profile although that is changing a little okay if I just give you an example our latest statistics we have reached 48.3 percent to uh indicated that they speak the use of English at home okay this is uh has grown largely since 2010 and um to 2020 I think quite a considerable jump in percentage in terms of speaking English at home
• 53:30 - 54:00 um our literacy rate uh right up to last year continues to remain consistent 96 to 97 percent okay and we also um have received encouraging results uh from International assessments uh from around the world like polls uh Pisa and as well as International baccalaureate so this is a bit of the background for Singapore um and in Singapore we also uh we also
• 54:00 - 54:30 focus on six areas of language learning um this is both in our national curriculum as well as our teaching resources okay so I think you would recognize this uh being Educators or researchers yourselves we have the receptive skills the productive skills and um uh knowledge about language and we give special attention to Grandma and vocabulary okay also because a little bit of our culture too we have a variation of English
• 54:30 - 55:00 Singlish okay which which functions on a totally different uh grammar uh patterns Etc okay so sometimes we we spell it out or make the distinctions for them and so we do make space right in the curriculum to teach them specifically grammar and vocab okay so um uh this was what really went through with us just now and this is the one thing I really appreciate about really that he makes all these theories so um
• 55:00 - 55:30 comprehensive and easily accessible to us so it really models the principles themselves okay so um I won't spoil the surprise but as I go through right as I walk you through uh um a typical type of uh play out of a lesson um you might like to at the back of your head um just have these five things in mind like hey where would you see that happening that principal playing out in in the practices in Singapore
• 55:30 - 56:00 okay okay so um we always start off with the receptive skills right input um uh which will eventually then lead to the productive skills so the Mainstay strategy in Singapore what we do is called uh or we have adapted the shared book approach so earlier on uh Billy was also talking that uh about it so internationally is known by many other names as well in Singapore this is slightly adapted to also uh localized
• 56:00 - 56:30 the teaching of this in in Singapore contacts this is very much taken from um the idea of bedtime stories so if you do a quick comparison here okay this one you'll recognize as your bedtime story right and this one you'll recognize it as um happening in the classroom so this a typical chat book approach set up in the classroom
• 56:30 - 57:00 so um the shared book approach is uh adapted we adapted from all the ways shared reading okay this is very popular uh uh approach for teaching reading and it's really trying to um mimic or replicate the bad time stories that were being done because research consistently showed that kids who received bedtime reading or stories at night with their parents they tended to uh um achieve better uh have higher
• 57:00 - 57:30 student achievement results academically in schools as compared to their peers okay so those having the Bedtime Stories tended to do better in schools academically so we're trying to replicate that and part of it um you will see um that we had to make modifications to it right because in the bedroom you can see that they're all close together you can just use one small book and
• 57:30 - 58:00 everybody can look at it but in the classroom and in Singapore our younger Learners we have about 30 in the class okay so there's no way we can fit them on the bed and keep them close to us okay so what we try to do instead is we get them to come to the floor come nearer to us right and you you will see the teacher also sitting down with a big book being very much nearer to them because of that idea of intimacy that we're trying to capture okay because this makes it for a safe environment for
• 58:00 - 58:30 our children and our research shows that when it's a safe environment for them they tend to also uh their learning becomes optimal okay so then you also see that during Bedtime Stories the parent the reading parent would use their finger and uh pointing to the pictures or drawing attention to words Etc right or maybe even gliding under the text okay so in class
• 58:30 - 59:00 um using the finger just won't work with 30 kids right you can't quite see so that's where we have the use of the pointer okay the the book of course I think you will notice the big difference you have a blown up version a really huge version of it that we use and um the pointer then you see the teacher using the pointer to Glide under the words right to mimic the fluency of reading the easel is used right um instead of on the lab okay so all
• 59:00 - 59:30 these modifications you you see um they're all uh attempts right to try to bring in the successful environment or the learning environment at home into the classroom okay so for us we have also adopted that and therefore the chat book approach um one more thing I also want to point out that in chat book approach we get them to discover the story okay so in discovering the story um we make use a lot but a lot of mediating or dialogic talk right you
• 59:30 - 60:00 will see the parent okay um in this in Reading And discussing the tags or the story what the parent is actually doing at home right is is already passing on write the proficient reader knowledge that the parent knows to the child so in the same way we bring it to the classroom we are doing that the teacher is the knowledgeable other right the reading expert but the teacher does is to discuss um the tags the pictures Etc with the
• 60:00 - 60:30 students okay and this this is where we call it the dialogic talk or mediating talk okay so it's not just reading straight up but it's also talking about hey what are the words why is the writing using such a word etc etc okay um and we of course Embrace students responses to the story um this is also to show them that narratives have multiple Pathways and it's also there in their response um to the story they also contribute to
• 60:30 - 61:00 making they also contribute to the sense of story and it's it's the engagement level that we're also going forward because now they become invested in the tax that we're doing that in the narratives okay so we'll make a distinction here between SBA versus story reading okay approach remember we make use of a lot of mediating dialogic talk um uh more so than just doing story reading okay so here's what we will try out it
• 61:00 - 61:30 may I'm going to use a text to help us okay and I'm just going to ask for uh five volunteers if possible um can we have five volunteers to pretend to be children yes it's a number one I'm good at it thank you number three Beyond number four and two thing number five there you go thank you can I ask you to unmute your
• 61:30 - 62:00 mic yes unmute unmute this microphone on okay thank you so much okay so here's what we're going to do um [Music] so imagine if I bring in this book into the class and I tell the kids that we are going to read this book together um uh but before we read it we're going to look at the cover page okay so do I have the children are are our children
• 62:00 - 62:30 ready supplied right yes yes yes I say yes yes so just respond um uh uh uh freely yeah so that's how you think the children would okay okay children yes the story that we're going to read okay in a while's time but before we even read the story do you think I can get you to share with us what do you see on the cover page it's a duck yeah well done I like how excited Camilla is
• 62:30 - 63:00 it is do you like it right okay great anything else you notice anything else that is sorry Junior the duck is doing I don't know what's that in in the back screen cleaning something yes cleaning something there looks like it's cleaning something possibly right and I'm glad you noted
• 63:00 - 63:30 that he's giving something here right this picture we may not be really know what it is yet but no worries any other responses why is the darkness in the pond that's a good question this is Singapore duck do you think yeah Farm oh I heard somebody say something uh is it is it plowing are you
• 63:30 - 64:00 ready yeah I think you say oh the dog the dog is plowing that's a big wet vaccine would you want to tell us a little more you seemed to know what this action is uh because the duck wants to like clean the land and plan something so that it's plowing right wow I suppose yeah yes you have a very smart child here
• 64:00 - 64:30 painting seems to understand a little bit about the applying process and it and it's true in some countries right they won't have to plow the land so like we're facing is saying they have to clean up the land and then they have to plant the seeds Etc okay so uh painting things that Doug is doing just that okay that's interesting any others two things you wanted to say something is actually I see Shadow oh that's right well that's very observant of you the shadow of the dark
• 64:30 - 65:00 right okay thank you shall we beat the title to see if we can find out more yes please I'll eat it for you it says farmer dog oh wow just now somebody said farmer right yeah speaking oh that's right wow that's very good beating and yes we we we looked at the
• 65:00 - 65:30 picture we could make so many right so many responses to this that's wonderful so we do know there's a dog and we do know now that he's a farmer what do you think that the story is going to be about um he's planting something for his food he's just saying he's planting something yeah I think so his plan is something I think ah he's planting something okay
• 65:30 - 66:00 okay any other responses is going to be about him planting something is that right okay any other responses will give you some good divisor I'm sorry I didn't quite catch that fertilizer fertilizer wow all the children in this class quite good huh with this process only seven years old about seven years old okay but that's very good yes
• 66:00 - 66:30 um it's true some of us may know even about fertilizer is right so um fertilizer helps the plants to grow even better okay so yes thank you very much for that so you think he's it's going to be a story about the Ramadan using fertilizer is it Carmella I'm I'm sorry you think the story is going to be Papa using the fertilizer is that right I think so okay interesting I think it may be a story about a dog
• 66:30 - 67:00 wants to plot something in some food on the deserted land because there is nothing on the land so he wants to grow something to eat maybe wow thank you amazing that's a very nice story idea right that's nothing everywhere it looks empty and now the dog is trying to plant something I want something to uh to eat good nice you're a very good reader of this class
• 67:00 - 67:30 any others um okay if not I'll read to you about what's on the cover page yeah Mama doc Martin waddle Helen oxenberry right they're probably the writer and the illustrator of the book okay thank you very much children okay I won't prolong your misery and I will I will um uh talk a little bit about this uh um
• 67:30 - 68:00 I'll just pause here for a while to talk a little bit about it he remember earlier on we talked about mediating dialogic talk right and I'm sorry let me get this one instead okay um we talked about SBA being very different from story reading okay so the idea of it being shared right chat book approach is to signal to the students signal to the children that the teacher is not going to read the story what's the difference if I were to read the story to the kids then my way of talking
• 68:00 - 68:30 would be a lot different in the classroom okay I will start off with okay children today we're going to read a story um called Pharma and um do you see the dark over here now this is a story that we're going to read and we're going to find out more about him okay so you will see that the the teacher is transmitting knowledge of what the text is about but in shared book reading the important um idea about chat book reading is this idea discover okay so the role of the
• 68:30 - 69:00 teacher is to be the facilitator of this to help the children to discover and you'll also see the teacher teaching right in a very subtle manner okay um things night you'll see the teacher talking about okay this uh let's read the title to see if we can find out more so they're very very quiet and support signals to the kid in terms of um the title can tell you a little bit more okay the the visual uh the illustration of the cover page probably
• 69:00 - 69:30 captures the essence of the text okay and the title as well so we can find out a little bit more in the title approach we tend to talk about the visuals as the illustrations why because for our Young Learners if they are using these pictures not all of them can read words right but they can be pictures so they're using these pictures to Transit into the text so that's why it's all the more important for them um and how they are doing this is they look at the pictures they try to work out make sense of it and then after that
• 69:30 - 70:00 connect it back to the text and you'll see that the text is always read by the teacher okay and you'll see as we go along in the text you'll see it's very broken up you'll see the teacher reading and then after that do you see the dot do you see where is the dark Etc okay so that that's sort of an idea we also tell them about the author the uh illustrator for example so suddenly we're already telling them that a book uh where I should be teaching them book conventions but we never say that okay and we use
• 70:00 - 70:30 the big book okay uh earlier on in that picture you will see the the teacher using that the big book put on an easel so you see it in 3D form how the teacher turns the page and the subtle message to the kids again is oh okay when I pick up a book an English book okay I always read prom I typically read prom uh top to bottom right to left but all this is never say all this is never said it's done through what the
• 70:30 - 71:00 teacher is modeling to them well and remember the pointer okay so the pointer is always with the teacher when the teacher reads and the teacher will lie under the word okay um the whole point of the pointer full point of the pointer okay is really to match print to sound so therefore you will see the teacher doing something like armor duck okay so it's kept very close to the words and it's helping or giving that subtle um subtle uh the subtlety again
• 71:00 - 71:30 signaling to the students that reading is meant to be very dual affluent and it helps them also okay with um uh oh okay this is the direction of print left to right Etc okay so um uh essentially that's what we do in the classroom in terms of reading but let me redo the whole story for you to enjoy and then later see how we even pull out lessons from there okay okay yeah oh yes and just one more thing
• 71:30 - 72:00 okay so in in doing that um the teacher is also harnessing the the rich types of the language so discussing oh what do you think um uh for example the student was talking about farmer earlier on right and then the the teacher could be asking oh why do you think it's a farmer Etc okay so later on that there might be some interesting user phrases that the teacher might be asking them why is this phrase used etc etc okay and always multiple responses as well so you will
• 72:00 - 72:30 also see that you don't just stop at one student although somebody did say farmer already but we always leave it yes possible possible okay and then um only when we beat then we confirm the the predictions and so they learn to always go back to the print okay let's enjoy the story this is farmer dark Martin bottle and Helen Oxenberg there once was a duck who had the bad luck to live with the lazy old farmer
• 72:30 - 73:00 the duck did the work the farmer stayed all day in bed the duck fetched the cow from the feet how goes the word called The Farmer the duck answered quack the duck brought the sheep from the hill how goes the work called The Farmer the dark man said quack the duck put the hands in their house how goes the word called the father the Dogman said quack the farmer got
• 73:00 - 73:30 sorry the farmer got fat through staying in bed and the poor dog got fed up with working all day how goes to work whack out goes the work whack how goes the work quack how goes to work quack how goes the work quack how goes the word quack soon the dot the poor dog grew sleepy and weepy and tired the hens and the cow and the Sheep got
• 73:30 - 74:00 very upset they love the duck so they held a meeting under the moon and they made a plan for the morning said the cow I said the Sheep Clark said the hands and that was the plan it was just before Dawn and the farmyard was still through the back door and into the house grabbed the cow and the sheep and the hens they stole down the hall they creeped up the stairs he squeezed under the bed of the farm and wriggled about
• 74:00 - 74:30 the bed started to rock and the farmer woke up and he called how goes the work and clock they lifted his bed and he started to shout and they banged and they bounced the old farmer about and about and about right out of the bed and he fled with a cow and the sheep and the hands mooing and buying and plucking behind him never came back
• 74:30 - 75:00 the duck awoke and waddled verily into the yard expecting to hear how goes the work but nobody spoke then the cow and the sheep and the hands came back quack as the dog moves at the cow said the Sheep flocks at the hands which told the duck the whole story then booing and buying and plucking and quacking they all set to work on their
• 75:00 - 75:30 Farm yang it's bummer duck okay so the later part I was just reading the story to you but you would imagine the teacher going through every page like what we did for the cover page okay always the illustrations always the questions are talking about it and then after that gliding under the woods Etc okay so from this and that's just the the reading process right the the first bit of it but you'll see that um um typically we take about uh two to
• 75:30 - 76:00 three weeks in order to to to to to mine the book okay for the other areas of language learning okay so the first thing is always that input skill we always do the reading but then first um the teacher is there helping right to unpack the story Etc okay but subsequent days you will see that they will do a lot of rereading okay so much so that until the end of the second week or the end of the third week the children uh would be able to beat the tax independently on their own because of
• 76:00 - 76:30 repeated thinking right and the whole idea of repeat that reading I think we all know also that uh research shows that um uh repeated reading uh uh uh leads very well to fluency right so that's an important element and that's why the teacher will keep bringing back the book but we also have another reason for bringing back the book because it's from there that we provide the context in order to teach and enable application of the other
• 76:30 - 77:00 areas of language learning okay so it could be grammar it could be vocabulary for speaking oral communication skills it could be for writing Etc okay any of the other areas of uh language okay and finally we will reinforce these language skills in a more holistic context right so this one we break it down in Parts already to teach the different uh to focus and zoom in on a particular skill right and this part we will bring it back into a holistic context see let's
• 77:00 - 77:30 see what we mean by this okay I think you will recognize this already as the whole pothole right we're doing a whole part whole here okay so let's see what it looks like okay so if you see if I'm going for an adjective uh sorry an objective like that matching the animals to the sounds they make they are like the students by the end of the lesson right um they'll be able to match right I probably will reread the book and then
• 77:30 - 78:00 zoom in probably on this page okay children let's take a look again uh um uh uh let's take a look again at this page okay and maybe even reread uh reread it with them and I'll say okay so what's going on here do you still remember etc etc okay and you you would uh quickly recognize that it holds a lot of potential for teaching the animals and the sounds that we make okay so you will see that from this page I can pull it out and get them to focus practice on
• 78:00 - 78:30 these animal sounds so probably um to enable the application I might have a word matching exercise for them okay so from this page itself I could teach them already okay what sound does a DOT make yeah it says quack right yep and that's how in English we normally say what uh um we normally use the sound for the animal type what about the cow yeah the cow says okay so these are the sound children that the animals are made so after we have done the teaching and
• 78:30 - 79:00 that's that's in a familiar context because we have already unpacked the reading we've already done the reading so after we have done that we could enable application by getting them to get into their groups and then getting them to match so these were found they can have picture cards and they can place snap with them for example okay so in their groups they could play and I could even do an extension of other animal sounds as well okay but the main bulk of it comes from the book right why because this provides a
• 79:00 - 79:30 context this is a familiar ground for them and it it is this familiarity that they are learning the vocabulary the sounds for the uh for the animals okay um and then at the end of it at the end of the lesson we could again present the book to the student and say okay let's see how good you are okay we have already learned for the day okay I'll uh match the animals to make the sounds let's see if you can recognize these words and
• 79:30 - 80:00 match it back to uh the sounds to the animals uh that make them so you can you you might read the book again or you just might read that page again but this time you blank it out and then the children can as you go along the children uh as we uh as we beat okay the children will fill in the blanks for that you could even get them to spell okay and as they go along we'll slowly review uh what they have learned okay
• 80:00 - 80:30 so that's one lesson that we can possibly pull out of a book like that okay and then um we could also do a grammar lesson so that one earlier was a little bit of a vocab lesson so we could also do a grammar lesson based on this book okay and the page that lands itself the pages that land itself well I think you might recognize it uh uh from these two pages right things like down the lane
• 80:30 - 81:00 um through the fields over the hill etc etc okay so from this we'll see again um the start of it we could really to help them uh recollect the story right okay so they understand or we come straight to the page and ask them did you still know uh can you recall what's happening over here Etc okay and then after that this time we will focus practice on prepositions write that down the through and over okay children what does down mean what is down okay can you all show the
• 81:00 - 81:30 actions together with how do we go down okay how do we go through something how do we go over okay so we just focus on these language items and they become the target item um for the learning for that day and then after that the children could uh for example right the teacher could get them to okay now that we have learned these words right we could uh get the students to recreate the chase using the prepositions learned right okay and this time they could put
• 81:30 - 82:00 it in their school for example okay what can you do with the steps oh we can go down the steps for example or we can go through the basketball court Etc so in this um in this way we can even extend it to whole text writing okay so we could set a writing task for them okay that they have to write a set of instructions to guide new students get new classmates new friends from the canteen back to the class for example okay and in doing this um even before they start writing okay
• 82:00 - 82:30 even before they start writing we get them to recall the experience okay so uh do you remember from the book okay do you remember from the previous lesson when we when we were describing how we were uh going through the different areas of the school okay and then um this one the teacher will probably start off with a classic data chat together with them so the classic changes type could probably look something like that
• 82:30 - 83:00 okay so from the book earlier on okay now we are extending the language used to get them to generate and use the language items for themselves right to generate the text now this is done as a classificated level so typically in Singapore we also practice the gradual release of responsibility so we do as a class later on they will do in groups maybe um uh write instructions to go to another part of the school for example
• 83:00 - 83:30 and eventually to a individual level okay so they would do individual writing right so um we might hear the teacher during the domestic data chat some possible problems that the teacher which news with the students uh Donna in a class dictated writing activity who does the writing is it the teacher or the student thanks for that really so for this for the classical
• 83:30 - 84:00 attacks the teacher is the one that will scribe for the children the children the children response and the teacher will scribe uh simply because um students at this age they are Young Learners and for them to both write and generate ideas become cognitively very happy for them got it so it's it's a bit more like modeling by the teacher yeah yeah teacher model the writing but the teacher also invites the students to
• 84:00 - 84:30 contribute ideas yes but since students may not be able to write on their own yet it's the teacher who is providing the the model that's an excellent way of teaching writing good plus dictated writing yeah I like that thank you thanks Billy thanks for reminding us uh about describing bit so typically that's what the teacher does and you will see again the teacher is teaching but it doesn't look like he or she is teaching
• 84:30 - 85:00 so you'll see the teacher oh what channel do you see you can give the tag or why would we want to use that what should the title do for your readers children we need a title that will that will uh what what does it do so you get the class respond that yeah the title should tell the reader already what uh what the text is about okay so what would be a good title children and sometimes they may not articulate the whole thing so nicely getting from class what a to school can do right they can't do that so you'll see the teacher helping okay so where were we going
• 85:00 - 85:30 right we're going to the school PMT okay and where were we from that's right how do we build it into the title right how do we say how do we say uh tell the reader that we are trying to give them instructions from class one a to school panty oh use getting you're getting it's a good word children shall we write that and then after you see the teacher writing getting from US1 a to the School Canton so it's a lot of negotiation with the children okay so again the teacher is
• 85:30 - 86:00 not writing it out straight away for them it's not teaching them directly like that okay but it's getting them involved in the writing but the teacher is negotiating at the same time and then helping them reform generate their thoughts and then describe it for them okay so that's the process for them okay so typically um uh the different uh forms of the lesson might look like that and if you see um earlier on Dr Billy was going through these principles together with us
• 86:00 - 86:30 right okay so um I wonder I wonder if you're able to see some of the principles being played out in their lesson that I just walked you through I'll just give you a few minutes to think about it okay if you like you can you can put it on the chat and then after that we'll just take it to the big group and round that up
• 86:30 - 87:00 [Music] foreign are you talking to me or talking to somebody else
• 87:00 - 87:30 okay maybe I'll just do a quick round up you probably have some thoughts about it and so I think um from the book itself you will see that we are very careful in choosing the books that we bring into the classrooms so most of the books are trade books out there there are authentic books um you uh that are sold outside okay um uh and quality children's books that we
• 87:30 - 88:00 choose okay just to mind the rich language attack because you will see that later on we are also uh pooling the the other teaching them the different areas of language learning pulling it all from this book okay they engage learning I think throughout you'll also see that um it's uh the teacher uh teacher-centeredness is less this lesson okay a lot of the students student-centered practices are brought in so the children are the one and
• 88:00 - 88:30 that's why it's called shared book approach okay So eventually the children also get the idea that oh okay um I can't just sit here and listen to a story I have to contribute okay share share construction off the text with the teacher okay also uh in the the uh also in in the other activities that they do as well okay for um meaningful practice for examples we try to get them to again get it from the
• 88:30 - 89:00 context get it from the context of the of the book right so that's that that whole part element and then we learned the different areas of language learning so we zoom in on these parts but we don't need it there okay so we bring it back to the whole again right and help them to see that yeah it's not learned discreetly the grammar items right it's not we're not giving them a list of prepositions and they have to learn it right but it's taught entirely in the context of meaningful
• 89:00 - 89:30 text right okay fluency development a lot of re-reading goes on right that same tags can be visited many times every day almost every day for the two to three weeks right and the children are are constantly engaged in reading and reading it again and also Donna as the text itself the story itself provides a lot of instances where sentences words get repeated again and again where goes the dark where goes the
• 89:30 - 90:00 cow where goes the same phrases are repeated and that's how you learn actually how because you get to hear the same words and expressions again and again and after you know after listening to this story like 10 times all the words all of a sudden says stay in your head and that's how children learn and that's how we learn as well yeah that's true yes thanks for Ops I mean that wow you're very you're very keen Observer he's a very good student very good child yes
• 90:00 - 90:30 repetition and um predictability element as well right so that it becomes easier for them to ease and do the language this is for Young Learners right so this is also one of the things that um uh we look out for when we select books uh for younger children as well that repeated language the structures Etc
• 90:30 - 91:00 and finally culture so even for a book you will see it so foreign except that by by class earlier on that the five students seems so extremely bright and familiar with this culture in Singapore our children don't get hardly hardly get to see pumps we are very much a city-state um very urbanized okay so for them this might become quite foreign to them as well okay so on one hand we introduce International culture to them we can teach them about farming Etc we talk in
• 91:00 - 91:30 general about it