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last week I attended the Harry Waters and will rickon's you know like webinar and Harry Waters did something that I really really enjoyed and uh it is called the waterfall answer and I really enjoyed it uh how many of you were um how many of you you know attended that that session and you know what waterfall answer is let me see oh very good good okay L okay I was there so you know what it means so I'm going to explain it very very quickly and this is how it goes I am going to ask a question and

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everybody is going to answer but at the same time that means that when I say go you're going to click enter not before let's see how teachers um take instructions and see if if you if you pay attention to what the teacher said ready okay okay so here goes my my first question okay the first question is who here has used characters in the classroom are you ready to answer one two three go oh see see how this is beautiful I love I love this idea from Harry Potter it's me me me very good I

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do yes yes yes very good excellent R rarely I mean it's not all all of us okay second question stop answering stop answering ah very good now the second question is how comfortable are you using Carter in in class come on go not much a lot very much great very enjoy it depends very it's great see so you know that uh not all of us are exactly the same and I have to confess something I was not a fan of using characters puppets or even stuffed toys in my class it was very difficult for me to work with so many things at the same

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time you know the book the the the flash cards that I made the the Blackboard that in my time it was green the tape recorder I know that the tape recorder for you is something brand new but um you know now nowadays it just do you click and then it's all the way you know and it's very nice so uh but one of my peers in the school that I was working uh she had a she had a dog and his name was Mato and Mato was a very you know like popular friend in in in that in that school and the kids loved Mato so

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much they loved when when Mato made mistakes or or did a different pronunciation so they was they they were so happy so I said well why not I am going to I'm going to do something like that and I am going to decide to do a different thing because I did didn't like uh using characters and something that I have to confess as well is that I know that you won't believe me but I was really really really shy and when I started using characters it was like H when every time that I was in front of

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my of the class it was very nice so because you know you have this bonding to your students right this this nice attachment so in my class I had an albino kid so I did this I made an albino character okay and it was incredible the way that that this kid and of course I named him Jerry there's always a Jerry in my in my in my characters and I will never forget his face when he saw Jerry the albino kid it was amazing it was like well a kid like me and then we even made sunglasses for him and we did lots

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of things because we knew that when he went into recess he had to wear um you know sunglasses so one of the kids said why not making sunglasses to to Jerry so we made sunglasses so it was of course this is not the real one because it was a long long time ago right so whenever it whenever we are in the classroom we have to act like uh like different people you know and when we're teaching English it's something that as teachers and as a non- teacher you have to you know come up with real different

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things to make your students understand and being able to produce a language okay now the H is very important because you know that you're not going to use this with six sixth graders okay you're not going to use this with h with teenagers but maybe you can actually ask them to bring characters from outside and see if you can work with uh with them right so next question why use characters in the in the class I mean why is it that we can use characters in the class and of course something which is very important

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is that the characters are important when you when we're teaching English because otherwise how can you how can you teach the third person how can you teach uh the ing Etc right very good everything that you're saying for engagement to make students participate imagine making engage engage and fun the students will love learning yeah so let's see the first thing is the the the characters will catch your students attention they Foster connections with them they make lessons more lively and

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entertaining something which is important is that the characters are not the magic ones the magical ones are the teachers who are going to give life to those characters and for that reason teachers must have you know um very good attitude and energy right remember nobody's Watching You the coordinator is not there parents are not there so your kids are going to really enjoy it right so of course we know that they help shy or anxious students to feel less intimidated when speaking through a character because it's like every time

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that you are behind uh behind a mask it's not you who who's talking it's the character you even give them a different voice and the kids they might just like it okay uh they provide meaningful and memorable experiences to enhance students memory retention I always use this this term meaningful and memorable being an &m teacher is something which is very very important because we have to make our classes meaningful and memorable right and of course like tamari is saying they are very important for role play and

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dialogues excellent okay now as well well we know that we have to practice our language so characters can bring real life situations or imaginative context to practice different kinds of language skills so it's really really important for us to remember that the kidss uh will will imitate those characters okay and sometimes it's really really nice when our books have different characters and those characters will be growing up with our with our students and those characters have different personalities

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so sometimes we have to say okay look at this page now who remembers uh who remembers Maya who remembers Ria sorry who remembers Simon how what is Simon like so uh let's pretend that we uh that we're Simon and we can do something as as he would do right so they can lead games ask questions because you know when we when we teach how to ask questions is very difficult how do you ask how do you teach kids to ask a question and have a a negative answer or a positive answer if you don't have you

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know like different kids to help you so that uh that that would be very important so let's do a very very practical activity look at this girl okay this girl is telling the the students this is Rya okay so Ria says look at the picture and find five similarities with your home Hometown okay and then the kids will actually do it sometimes they do it in in in their own language don't worry the only thing that you have to do is put those um those words into the language not translating but put the what they say

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into English right so in this case you can see that we're going to present vocabulary how would you present vocabulary well how would teachers introduce vocabulary for third graders or for very little ones or for big ones the the steps must always be the same first of all you have to very good flash card thank you very much always always always uh use visual aids flash cards cutouts your book something around story cards excellent so the first pictures so in this case as my kids already know the

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numbers I would just go like this oh realia very good pictures everything so in this case I'm going to tell you what uh Jerry is like Jerry is a little bit shy so every time that he says a word he says it in a very low tone of voice right and Mia so who is he he is Jerry he is Jerry and now who is she he is Mia she is Mia Mia is you know she does doesn't mind uh saying things incorrectly or not and she uses this voice right so in this case what you're going to do is if I show you this the kids will have to say the word

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in a very shy Mo mood okay if if I show Mia the kids will have to say it you know like loud right okay so imagine let's let's pretend I I I will pretend that you're doing it beautifully in your house ready so number four carrots now do it three times carrots carrots carrots now what about number five tomatoes three times Tomatoes tomatoes tomato so in a way I mean we're doing exactly the same thing we're we're giving the the word the kids will repeat it corally and then we can do it in

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individually by just pointing out the characters right that will give you a different way to do the same activity that we have always done before okay and of course it's not like saying and of course of course sometimes we can say now let's do it in a scared way so we are very scared so number three peaches and of course this is cool because nobody is looking at your face they are watching Another another face so if I do this they go like like that okay so this is so much fun for the kids and of course for the

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teacher when the teacher enjoys doing these type of of activities the kids really enjoy doing doing exactly the same things because they say well if the teacher is that crazy why not we can we can have a a bow right so something is uh it's very important is that we always choose I mean not it's not that you will have to do a lot of things you know how much time do you think you you uh I mean you can do these things it's like cutting out pasting and that's it it's like 15 minutes problems of connection h

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i I thought it was going like because correction this is something that is really nice when the kid is making a mistake it's not the teacher who's going to make the to to uh to do uh you know like the um to say it correctly but maybe what some of the characters might do it right so this is uh this is really cool now look at this really nice guy this guy is very intellectual and he is the grammar guy so every time that the kids will look at this guy they will know that there is something that um

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that that uh the book is going to tell us to be able to speak in a better way so this is grammar time and we know that sometimes in grammar it's very difficult because grammar in English is very difficult everything was beautiful with a verb to be it's like I am a student I am not a student am I a student but then the verb to have came and it was like I have a cat I have not a cat I have I a cat I mean British English is really cool because what you do is I have got a cat have you got but again then again

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but no we have different things so I really want to introduce two very good friends of mine okay so meet Dey okay so this is Dey hello Dey hello mam okay so this is doy and Dey is a very intelligent guy but guess what he always works with I you they we but he doesn't work with he she and it but we have oh hello dosy so he's doy and he's doy okay so hello Dy hello deey let's work together okay I am going to work only with i u we day okay okay and I am going to work with he she and

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Ito that's really cool okay so in this case we are going to work in a different way so uh Dewey is only going to have you know like green stuff so the do for for question and the the Dustin so he will the Dustin is somewhere here I don't know where it is but it exists ah here it is okay so here don't sorry don't so doy is always going to have this right but what's H what happens with this red one so he's doy okay and this one is going to work with does doesn't or that and of course we have

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another one who is you know asky so asky is always asking questions so every time you you you show this asky the kids will have to make a question okay but will they use doy or will they use Dey okay so in this case what is it that we're doing we're making we're actually making very abstract Concepts very visible right so we have H good so in this case look look what I found look look at his size there is an s in his size I I you know I bought this like on you know it was yesterday on Sunday I bought this and

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and this is really cool this has an s in his in in his eyes and that means that he every time that we talk about him in the present we will have to use he walks she runs he whatever and she as well right so we have both of them and they have just you know very nice eyes so that means that this Dosey will actually you know they are best friends forever the does and the S of course the S you know goes away when it's a question but that's another story and this is something that they will have to talk

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about when they make questions okay so as you can see it's something that it's very simple super simple the only thing is to just bring this to life okay so what what else is there you know with using um characters well first of all they they can reinforce cultural learning they can introduce Customs idioms or tradition associated with English speaking countries or their own countries so maybe we can actually have uh so um you know like the typical characters from that country if I tell

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you I want to bring a British character in my class who would you bring yes I did did that with myself Elizabeth and if you want it I can send it to you via email huh I always have surprise I am a very sharing person teachers that share you know um share joyness okay so in this case in Mr Paddington very good Paddington uh oh Harry Potter why didn't I think about Harry Potter yes cliford I forget about cord but the first thing is I will tell you later is Elizabeth so we have Paddington of course so we can have

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Padington saying different idioms instead of say I mean he can teach the kids saying cheers instead of saying goodbye so there are lots of things that they can do but what about uh in in uh in Poland I know that there is a very important dragon in Poland so we can have this uh this dragon in Poland or okay for those of you because I've seen that there are many from Mexico my um my compatriotas uh so tell me which one would you immediately think about what is his name for those of you who are not Mexican

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they I will attack but I need a character well this one is El Chapin Colorado in in Mexico we call him Chapin Colorado and it's like the the red grasshopper okay so uh it's a it's so we can actually give cultur about these things the way that that these characters would produce the language and another one would be this one Speedy Gonzalez right so we want our students to be to do things in a very quick way we can do it with Speedy Gonzalez right or we can actually talk about speedy and

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salers or uh lots of the things that you can lots of characters that you can think of and then little by little you can actually build them into your class now imagine this lesson okay and then again we have we have Simon here Simon is going to tell you uh that he's going to uh he's going to work with critical thinking skills right and sometimes with with emotional aspects so this is really um this is a very nice character as well in the book every time that the kids see it it's like H I will have to make a

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question or I will have to answer a question in this case uh we have this lesson with different parts of the world right so why not uh bringing a character from outside and say well this is a Spanish character what kind of a Spanish person will that be etc etc right so as you can see using characters will never have endings never it's a you will always be able to use the character you will always be able to enjoy behind the character and something which is very important as well is that um they

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actually build so social emotional skills because working with their peers to interact with or create characters promote teamw work this is something which is really really nice and uh and uh when you actually do the characters and the kids actually do the characters and they make their own puppets they can make puppets you know not the average puppet so maybe they can uh have a puppet wearing eyeglasses or on a wheelchair or uh or that this is a very important question what if characters are used

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daily do students feel uninterested or bored yes on a daily basis uh May students can actually feel you know like and then again here comes whever that is when it comes to uh with a very little ones you can use them every single day and they will really love it when you use it with third graders or fourth graders maybe what one day you don't you don't use and some of the kids will say and teacher where is uh Jerry or where is Mia and then you go like okay so here it is so it is it is very important for us to um

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to to bear that in mind something that you do on a single uh you know every single time then uh it's not that you know that nice as Jeff was saying I mean it's if you play all day you know it's not something that gives you you know the the you know this passion of what is going to be next right so um they these characters can allow students to step into someone else's shoes because maybe they are going to um to build a character uh a puppet with their socks that is uh that is in on a wheelchair or a or a blind

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kid you know in hen I have a teacher and she had these puppets and well not puppets these flash cards with uh and then what she did was to put you know like silicone glue and then the the eyes and the nose and the mouth uh the kids can actually feel feel the you know the you know the feelings so if it'ss the the mouth you know upside down and the and the ear and the eyebrows so it's really nice so we can actually do it and then we can actually uh um uh do different different things with

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the kids and for the kids because you know that sometimes you have a kid who's not able to do things as the other ones and maybe it's like well he needs time to do and so this character is going to need time to uh to work right so as you can see when when we talk about characters we usually talk we usually think that the characters will be there for our kids some some books do have characters some some of the of the lessons will be definitely used and and worked by the characters right so as you

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can see there are lots of things that you can do with your with your kids and some you have you were mentioning about uh role playing and this is something which is important uh remember that when you're when we're teaching little kids the first thing that we have to do is there controlled dialogues and once the kids know the controlled dialogues little by little they will be able to do a um a role play because it will have all the all the grammar and everything that it's needed to do the the role play

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so so as you can see and I what I would like to tell you is like as you leave here today don't worry about being a perfect teacher or a very you know formal teacher that you have to teach English in a very uh formal way remember students don't need a perfect teacher they need a happy Teacher who's going to get them excited to come to school and and to grow a love for learning so my following question would be are you a happy Teacher now with lots of icons please send me all your icons if you're

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a happy Teacher and you're yes very good now I I love look look at all these icons this are really cool look at this this is really really cool and this is exactly what we really want to have in our class Happy Teachers enjoying exactly what they do sometimes we get tired because we're not uh we're not superheroes well we are superheroes but uh we can get tired and I really want to share this because I am so lucky to be surrounded with all these Happy Teachers throughout the world we can see teachers

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from Chile Mexico Spain Egypt so thank you thank you very much for sharing your time with us