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all right I'll take a deep breath because this is quite an intensive thing to do so um get ready because today we are talking about the building blocks of grammar and vocabulary to helping our students get ready for their future education so um if you specialize in teaching Young Learners as I do then we are responsible for equipping them with the very basis but uh we need to make sure that the very bases are really really well acquired so that the further education is going to go smoothly and

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they have a chance to achieve Mastery that Goa is going to talk about later on uh in this blog and uh so we are focusing on Young Learners trying to build their competence in English um out of blocks of grammar and vocabulary step by step um okay so first things first first um I need to warn you that this I planed as a slightly interactive session so I would it would be really great if you could uh cooperate a little bit and be active so when I ask you a question you can just um uh type it into the chat

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and we will have sort of interaction uh in this not perfect channel of an online meeting um and so first I am going to teach you a language okay now this is an artificial language I made it specifically for this occasion so that nobody knows the words of the language okay so I'm going to teach you a few phrases and few words um of this language and you need to focus a little bit because then there is a test okay there'll be a quiz okay you ready off we go so a cat in this language is vuru

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okay now a black cat is luru okay then a big black cat would be a tiu and I will buy a house by the Sea would be mil Bala N A black cat can climb would be lanui a black cat eats meat my mom is a vet would be and the black cat likes to sleep would be okay so this is the language just like a sample a tiny little sample of the language and here comes the quiz okay so if you could just type in the answers in the chat the first question is how do you say in my artificial language cat let's see okay lots of people know

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how to say cat perfect okay lovely you've learned a word that's it you're right okay let's try a different one how do you say in my artificial language black no yeah that's perfect okay that's a lot of people got getting it right I can't even name you very nice this is the word okay and the last one how do you say in my artificial language house all these words were in the previous slide we were learning those ahuh no not so sure not so many okay that was the word for the

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house okay so how how is it that you've learned cat so easily and even black cat but you couldn't learn so well the word house of course there will be people who will learn all of those because this is how memory works but uh still it was much better for the house yes Louisa the the fact that you remembered cat best and black cat not so badly is because it was repeated so many times okay if you don't repeat and revise vocabulary it will get lost because if you see something only once then you

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know if you're not using it I'm sure that you've got such facts and such abilities such skills in your mind that you haven't been using for years and if you had to use it now it wouldn't be so easy like some concepts of maths or history or some knowledge of chemistry you learned that but because you were not using it too much it got forgotten okay now especially with language it is very important that we revise and repeat because otherwise the language goes under the process of attration so we are losing

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the language if you're not if you're not using it okay so if we are to build the strong foundations for the students to learn the language better we need to come up with something that will ensure that the students will revise the material over and over again so that they never forget okay and um the modern methodology of teaching languages or any other subjects as well um have come up with the concept of spiral curriculum uh it is often um we believe that Bruner is the author of the Spiral curriculum um

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which rests on like three pillars okay so it talks about a curriculum that develops um around the um different topical areas and uses different concepts of grammar throughout the whole education starting very early on until the very last stages of Education using the same topics and the same concept reoccurring every now and then but in a different form okay so the three major pillars of uh spiral curriculum would be prior knowledge repetition and Rising complexity okay and we are going to look at each of them

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uh one by one okay so how do we use those Concepts in our classroom so that we are in tune with the spiral curriculum idea prior knowledge okay um all the students come into the classroom with some knowledge okay uh typically the knowledge of those students is diverse they've been watching different cartoons they play different games English is present everywhere so it is unrealistic to expect that your students come to the classroom you've got a new topic and they know absolutely nothing

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about it they will probably know something okay so we should be building on this prior knowledge to also motivate them so that they can see that this knowledge is useful because something else is built upon it okay and that it's not forgotten and it actually makes sense to remember it because it will be used later on uh but because they come with this prior knowledge we should not be starting with um the idea of you know nothing I know everything now I will tell you okay alternatively we should

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come with the attitude of test teach test approach okay so first we have to see what they know then once we've collected all this knowledge we teach okay something that they don't know okay to finally again test the whole thing what they knew and the thing that we taught okay so the approach of test teach test I'll show you at an example so uh let's imagine that the topic is animals okay so this is the topic I made with my students as an example especially for this presentation so we

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were talking about animals and I told my students okay let's let's talk about animals but but uh let's categorize this knowledge a little bit so let's think of four um categories in which we are going to talk about animals and my students came up with these categories so we've got animals that live at home tiny creatures like you know spiders creepy cres um animals in the wild and fantasy animals as well okay so let's focus on the animals in the wild here again we can think of uh where those animals can

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be found okay so they can be found in the forest in the jungle or a zoo We were not sure or we can uh we can also find some water animals okay so let's focus on water animals first okay now I am picking the the brains of the students first in the phase of test okay so this is the first test phase okay I'm asking my students okay so we are we will be talking about water animals what water animals do you know okay can you imagine what kind of uh what kind of water animals they could guess they were

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seven 8ish at the time whales that could be yes that's a good an octopus definite Dolphins yeah sharks fish excellent okay yeah that's more or less what they came up with okay so we came up with a dolphin and an octopus and a fish okay within the time limit I gave them okay so now we are moving to the stage of um teach okay I've tested we know some now we teach I teach some new vocabulary so we've got a whale a crab and a shark okay I I added to their set of vocabulary that they already had that

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they came to the classroom with okay and so now now we've got a set of six words that I want them to remember so we are going again to the stage of test okay and now I'm going to I the easiest and the one that I really like idea for testing is um The Disappearing vocabulary okay so if you've got an interactive whiteboard you can just U um blank it out and if you've got a traditional board you just wipe it out from the board okay so some of the words are disappearing but the students still

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are supposed to tell me what was there before I wiped it off okay now the idea is based on the theory of anchoring okay anchoring is an idea that um when when the students are looking at a given part of the board their brain will recall what the word was before I wiped it off okay and so this way I'm telling the students to close your eyes or or to close their eyes or to turn around and some of the words are um disappearing and then they have to tell me but not what is missing remember not to play

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what is missing because if you play what is missing there will be one child in the classroom that will always shout out the answer first so the slower children are not going to compete they will give up okay so instead of playing what is missing we are always starting to read the words read the words the pictures from the start okay so it doesn't matter what is missing at the moment we still are starting to say as a whole class Coral repetition we are doing shark what was the there was a crab crab whale

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dolphin octopus fish okay and then again they close their eyes so turn around and some other animals are missing and again we are not saying what's missing but we start from the very beginning and again in these in these places I just I just point at the places and they say what was there okay one by one okay until the end until all the words are missing and then they are like wow now we can see something that is not there okay so this is the test that we that we do um I made my mind map with mindo it's a

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very simple tool very very intuitive and it's free it's online and it takes like Split Second to make a a word a mind map like that if you like working with mind maps with with an application or a tool I highly recommend this one you can change the Styles you can add pictures videos whatever you want it's all free um in the basic form basic is absolutely enough um okay so that was building on prior knowledge and now we're looking at repetition okay so repeating the same topic okay creating lessons around the

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same topic is very important for them to come back and revisit the topic and recall all the words that are stored in their memory to become active for a moment not to you know fall asleep and die there somewhere in the brain because all the vocabulary is needed is important and we we we need it to communicate all the time so it has to stay active okay it just can't get dormant somewhere in the brain um and so in the spirro curriculum that uh we have now actually everywhere I think this not only about

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English but other other subjects most of them also use that uh because it's a concept of modern methodology the topics repeat okay apart from animals what topic can you think of that you can can find in a course book for little ones a little bit older students and even adults what would that be food yeah definitely family yeah family is a good idea too uhuh parts of the body yes parts of the body definitely uhuh work body family yeah school supplies right as well okay lovely perfect yeah so um with research

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on big data shows that those that are regardless of where you teach English in which part of the world the typically reoccurring topics would include animals School home food Sport and family these are like the top six ones that uh that are always there okay that they will they will come back to you okay but uh they do not just come back in the same form because that would be pointless they are coming back uh in different complexity so that you can add something to what you already know to how you

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already are understand the language okay so in at the beginning when you were when when you were very little you got a lesson about animals where you've got only a set small set of animals and uh the teacher tells you how to say that this animal is big small this one has two legs this one has four legs and you can say something about the tail whether it's short or long okay and then next year you open the coursebook and there is animals again but this time there are different animals C the set is a little

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bigger there are other animals and this time you are able to say that there are some and there aren't any okay and now it works like a cumulative review okay so this year you've learned today these new words and you can say there are some bears there are some foxes there aren't any Tigers okay but because you already know some words we are using the knowledge that you already have so you can also say there are some elephants okay and it also works progress aggressively so because you can say

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something about the legs and the tail of an elephant and a tiger now you're transferring this knowledge to the new year and you're saying okay and the bear has got a short tail okay and the fox has got a long tail okay and then a year passes and we open the course book and there are animals again okay and uh these animals are very different because these ones live in the water and now we are uh enabled by the teacher to say that something is bigger slower smaller faster okay so again you can say that

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the uh seahorse is smaller than the dolphin but at the same time you can say that the wolf is smaller or or lighter than the bear okay you can also say something about the elephant or something about the monkey because the knowledge cumulates okay and you've got a lot now to talk about more and more with every year so the student has the feeling that okay so so I can use the same language talk about something that I learned a year ago two years ago so it fits it sort of goes to the same drawer

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in the brain okay and then a year passes by and now you've got um parts of the body of the animals so you've got parts of the body of the animals you can talk about the water animals you can talk about the jungle animals and the forest animals and whatever animals you have already learned because you have accumulated a lot of vocabulary and now you can talk about all of that okay this this is how the spiral curriculum works okay so it adds but it adds with some Edge right something more a little bit

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more a little bit more complex so that you can you can go up and down the spiral within the topic because you already have this knowledge and you should be practicing that so as not to forget because forgetting is a natural phenomenon and it happens okay so especially when you teach very Young Learners I'm sure that you've got this U experience that you teach them because they learn very fast you teach them something on a Friday and they learn it super fast okay and you so excited that your students learn so much today and

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then you come back on Monday and they look at you like who are you and what do you want okay what topic what do you want what words okay as if they have never had that before because they forget very quickly so you need to definitely revise and revisit more often when you are working with young Learners and less often when you working with teenagers but the repetition and revision is essential because without it this is how the brain works we need to have this ability to forget and because we do have this ability then sometimes

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some of the words that we've learned just get into the the Forgotten Zone okay now um it actually has a scientific pace of forgetting gets a scientific um idea of the the pace how it happens okay so this is zebing house is forgetting curve and it tells us that if today I teach you 10 words and today you have learned 10 words we are in 100% okay you've learned 10 words and today you remember them but tomorrow you are maybe going to remember four okay like in a week you maybe will remember two and if

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I ask you in a month you will maybe remember what the cat was in my artificial language okay because this is how forgetting happens but the power of revision is considerable okay because if I teach you these 10 words today and you start forgetting and you revise them tomorrow it will only take you 10 minutes to come back to this nearly 100 you will never get to nearly to 100 but nearly to 100% you will come back okay then once you've done it tomorrow you can revisit the same words on day seven so in a week

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time and it will only take you five minutes to recall everything okay and in a month it will only take you two to four minutes because it has gone to your longterm memory and now it's remembered okay so this is why we should revise and recall the vocabulary with the students if you've got tech tech kids students that like technology um there are space repetition uh software applications that help students um revise and repeat okay and they I've chosen those because uh they are all free to use and students

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can have fun doing the games because they're gamified uh some of them are competitive like dualingo so you can compete with your friend and say okay so I have practiced um this kind of this vocabulary of this grammar uh this week that that much okay show me your results okay you're competing here or memorise um for example which not only gives you the opportunity to practice the language itself but also so culture literature something that if the students are more interested in English as such not only

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in the language they will enjoy that as well um I've got some ideas of revision games that are very simple and they are cost free and you can use them in the classroom at any time uh revision games for vocabulary that I like best and work best with my classrooms are uh chains for example especially with the youngest Learners right so this is the activity when you take a fluffy toy or a ball and you start sentence saying I went to the seaside and I saw a starfish okay and you throw it to a next person the next

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person says I went to the seaside and I saw a starfish and a dolphin a starfish dolphin and a shark and so on uh the funny thing is that when they start forgetting after like four fourth words probably they are looking at the people who said The Words which shows evidence for anchoring yes because you associate the word with a person okay which is which is really funny to see the beginning of the sentence of course can be do whatever you want if you've got a student at very low levels you can start

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very easily like I've got I like what whatever um phrase works for your topic um 5c rule is like a general game you can buy it anywhere but um it it doesn't suit all the topics for Young Learners so what I do is I come with to my students with empy cards and I tell them make the cards yourselves okay so if it was the lesson about see animals I would give them the the cards and I would tell them okay so write name three water animals or name three animals that walk on four legs name three green animals

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okay or whatever so that uh we have a set of of such cards for every topic and then we can uh we can play at the end of the year using all the vocabulary for example then get big revision um all the dictation when you've got a course book that has those mini flashcards every student has got own set of mini flash cards and then you can play lots and lots of different games my favorite um are or died dictation especially for the youngest Learners so one learner puts uh the the pictures in whatever order he

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wants then they uh put like a book between each other so they can't see the each other's pictures and the other person tries to put the the his pictures or her pictures in exact same order okay so this one person says okay so I've got an eel and a crab and an octopus and then they compare they take off the book and they compare with the order the same a similar one is vocabulary battleships so they both place for example six such pictures and uh then one person is asking okay have you

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got an octopus in place three okay if if I'm right then I get the octopus if I'm not right then I have to try again okay maybe maybe I'll remember that three is not octopus maybe I'll guess next time in next round I'll guess is if three is a whale maybe I'll I'll be more lucky um perfect partner so each child gets takes just one card and they are mingling walking around in the class and they're trying to find another octopus for example so if I've got an octopus the

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grammar structure that you want to use depends on you and on the level of the class so you can they can walk around and say are you an octopus and if someone is an OCT octopus and I'm an octopus we're a perfect pair okay um pair collectors so children are playing in groups of three or four and they collect not all of the cards but just some okay like maybe seven or eight uh and uh they are they they hold it like like cards okay and um they are asking each other for a pair okay so can I have

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a starfish and if I asked Mary and Mary has got the starfish she has to give it to me and I've got a path but if Mary doesn't have a starish she says not sorry and I miss a turn Okay so somebody now she's asking okay and they can play memory but remember if they play memory then uh when they are uncovering the pictures they need to say what they see because otherwise there is no no language element um or you can play Bingo um I've got like a good idea technical idea especially if you work

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with big groups is that you make the Bingo charts on big pieces of paper you just make you know like a table okay for six or for sorry for nine or 12 pictures okay and every time you want to play Bingo you give it away to the students and the student just put the cards on it okay so it's reusable so at the end of the activity you collect it and you keep it because if you you give it to the students half of them will lose it okay and then it will be difficult to play so my advice just yeah make it and collect

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it and just give it out every time you want to play Bingo uh bottle swing I like a lot and you play it with big flash cards so you put the flash cards on the floor and the students around the flash cards and one student swings the ball and whatever the cork lands they have to either just name the animal uh in this case or they have to say a sentence with the animal or with the most advanced classes I also have a rule that if Mary happens to get a crocodile she can say the crocodile is green but

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the next person in some other around gets the crocodile as well they cannot say the crocodile is green they have to come up with a different sentence okay so yeah that's a game my students like best okay and the last one is the rising complexity that we have already seen here uh so students are revisiting we are revisiting with the students the same topics but they are not the same because the complexity of the language gets higher okay but it doesn't get terribly higher it's not a leap it's

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just a tiny little middle steps especially at the beginning when we are just building the foundations it can't be a lot it has to be just n plus one just a little bit okay uh it goes along with the theory of vigotsky of the zone of proximal development I'll show you an example of a child learning to skate okay so at the beginning the child can't really skate but he's happy that he can sort of keep balance standing on Ice okay this is his current ability this is how much he can okay but if he gets a

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little bit of help he will also move a little bit okay but he won't jump or make purs but he will move a few steps forward okay but only if somebody helps him this somebody in our case is us okay the teacher helps the student make those little steps because the student is ready okay the student is ready now to make those steps we we know because he can keep the balance okay so on his on his own he wouldn't be able to make those steps but if we help him just a little bit he can uh of course there are

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many other things that he cannot and this is not the time all right so the child is not ready yet not ready now to do the pirouettes or the jumps or whatever maybe if he is persistent and he still likes skating after years and years of practice he will get there because the zone of proximal development will move but not drastically just a little bit okay with every accomplishment so in terms of English uh it would be the situation in which our students can name the sport okay so you show them flashcards and one

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of the flash card is skating and the students say skating okay or you show football and the students say football okay so because they know that now they are ready and for you to introduce I'm skating okay now they are not they are not going to do that on their own because they don't know the structure and also they are going to make mistakes yeah now with this structure the typ typical mistake is I skating right so they are going to like Miss the copula so you're going to correct them all the

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time and with your help they will be able to learn I'm skating because they are ready for that okay they are not going to learn I've been skating for years because that's not the moment okay they are not ready for that yet okay so uh what we as teachers are doing in this process is building a scaffolding okay so we are helping the students to read at the next level within the zone of proximal development but the the step is tiny tiny little step okay not a huge leap because that's impossible that that

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you cannot do okay so how it works for grammar is that you've got um for example we are introducing past simple quite early on okay so we are starting in the the first years of education but we are not starting with everything like right now yeah I'm going to present all the p simple to you because I know okay now we are starting with small steps so the first thing they see is just uh the past simple of the verb to be okay can you see that it's just wasn't and weren't and that's it that's enough okay

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because this is what they are ready for and they can grasp it and once they've internalize this knowledge we move on and we say okay so now we are going to make a little step forward okay and I'm going to make this uh past simple a little bit more complicated so we are not only going to focus on B in the past but we are going to look at different verbs okay but if you can if you can see in this um picture in this activity they are not just all verbs yeah can you see those what kind of verbs are they in this past

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simple regular of course right they are all regular because it's easier because there is a bigger rule there is a rule okay they are all regular so first we start with to be in the past then we introduce the the regular verbs because it's easier they're not going to make mistakes okay we are just giving them enough to to develop this to to make this one more step okay and later on next year or or in in a few different uh other lessons we are introducing them to the concept of negative okay and this

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time we are introducing also irregular verbs so we've got go see have right and finally in the end we can put that all together and also add a question okay with the operator which is quite difficult for children and uh we can start uh making questions and answering those questions using both regular irregular verbs and also to be because we have to revise everything okay not to forget it's not like we've learn it's not you know I'm telling my students it's not like uh biology right you've

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learned something and now you you can forget it because we are never going to revisit it again this is language you are going to need absolutely everything you can't forget anything okay so so yeah so we have to come back to this to be in the past as well okay my ideas for grammar revision again very simple ones and you know costree uh chain stories which I'm sure that you're using so just you know I start a story in the past and throw a fluffy toy somebody catches it and continues the story which is like a

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typical kind of activity students like it um dear diar I like a lot um this is when I tell my students okay think of a famous figure from the past you are this famous figure from the past write two three sentences about your regular day in such a way that we might try to guess who you are okay um or travelous letters you say okay you're alltime Travelers I would like you to travel back in time somewhere and when you come back we are going to write letters in which you are going to describe what you saw and we

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will try to to to guess what times they were okay or what place it was um who was I it's like the 20 question game uh when the students are thinking of a figure from the past and you are asking questions and they are guessing Okay um secrets from your past it works like two truths and the lie but instead of present you're making it past okay so you say okay when I was a child I had a pet turtle when I was five I something yeah and two are true and one is false okay and you need guess um interview

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with the time travelers so you send those Time Travelers back in time and then they come back and then they then another student interviews uh the time traveler so what did you see okay where did you go who did you meet okay we are practicing the question formation and the the students are practicing sentences in the past um retelling a story challenge so my favorite version of this one is that you take four students outside the classroom or somewhere in the corner and you read to them a very short story but it needs

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to be quite detailed okay and then they go and form four groups and uh each student retells the story that they heard okay then the whole group try to recreate what they remember from from what the students said they write it down and then we compare it with the original and it's never the same okay it really is funny um breaking news so um you come into the classroom or students right short news depending how how advanced they are if you've got more advanced students they can write the

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story the the the news um on their own um I've got the original one my students made it especially for me for this session yesterday A cat was climbing a tree when it got stuck the fireman arrived and tried to helped the cat the C the cat the cat got scared and attacked the fireman and this is the end of the of the breaking news and now the class asks questions okay what else would we like to know about this story okay and we are trying to make up uh for the missing information okay so what was

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what was the fireman uh wearing why was the cat scar okay we're trying to down those to make those breaking this breaking news more interesting okay so uh just to put it all up together um we were talking about building strong foundations so that the students knowledge can get uh more advanced with years to come because they also need a lot more years of education to build the house of proper English competence okay but because we are working with children we need to make sure that the basics the F the

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foundations are really well laid because if we don't then there will be problems like I can see with my students at University I teach at The English Department and the students are really highly Advanced C2 students with um no problems with inversion or very complicated grammar structures and then we go to the schools for for Teacher uh training and I can see that they have problems with the simplest grammar because the these foundations were not laid well okay they were just rushing to get to the C2 level so that's that's how

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it works so we were talking about this um spiral curriculum and I would love you to remember that uh this spiral curriculum is based on students prior knowledge so we have to use whatever the students can don't ever assume that they know nothing ask them maybe they will know something and you can some you can be even surprised how much they know and the revision and repetition because this is the key for them to uh have those foundations played well and that uh we are teaching every time we are

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revisiting the topic the the complexity of the topic itself of the context in which is presented is a little bit more complicated a little bit more complex but we are doing it very slowly so the steps are small it's more complicated but it's not incred incredibly more complicated just a little bit more complicated because otherwise they will not jump to it okay and with that I'm leaving you uh with those foundations I hope built for the next session where Gosha is going to tell you how the

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students teenage students are using the knowledge to to to build a house on those foundations they get from us when we do our job well thank you so much