(How to make kids look forward to opening their books)
An old article of mine from English Teaching Professional Issue 45
Okay Ladies and Gentlemen, let’s start. Open your books please…
If you had any negative reaction to that command, for example your heart sinking or just confusion, then you just felt how our kids often feel when they are asked to reach for their books. If we want to take away those negative feelings, we need to make bookwork more manageable and fun. There are two ways of doing this: making sure the students are warmed up, in the right mood and fully prepared before they open their books, and making sure that good feeling continues even when the book are opened.
Making bookwork fun- before they open their books
Any warmer at all before the books are opened will certainly help, as will any presentation of the language, but a perfect lead in to the book work will include all of the following points. Firstly, get students warmed up physically and mentally before they open their books. Next, try and connect seamlessly between pre-book games and the actual bookwork, for example continuing True/ False Stations (standing up or sitting down depending on whether what the teacher says is true) with statements about pictures in the book. Also, make sure students are well prepared for the bookwork, by introducing all the language before or during the pre-book game. If possible, do something in class which is similar to the book activity- e.g. if they will be drawing, have them drawing on the whiteboard or with their fingers first during the lead-in activities. Also, make sure that opening books is something that helps with something they are doing in the classroom rather than the most difficult part of lesson, e.g. by students looking in their books for example words they can make out of the alphabet cards they have been given as points (for extra points). Finally, if possible wear young children out enough physically to make them want to sit down and get their pens out for a rest!
Trying to make sure the warmer links to the bookwork leads on naturally to one great way of brainstorming ideas for games involving bookwork:
Look at what is in the book, and think about how we can adapt it and use it to make the lesson fun
As an example, I looked through FAB Blue (for five-year-olds). Although I’ve used this book many times before, and considered it to be quite minimalist, when I actually sat down to analyse it I was surprised by how many things there were which I could take advantage of to add some fun. This included: pictures to colour in, things to connect with a line, colour pictures, numbers (words and figures), letters of the alphabet (including some ‘hidden’ in the pictures), spaces to draw things, letters and words to draw/ trace over, spaces to write numbers, stickers, places to write (first) letters in, and maths puzzles. After 20 minutes brainstorming, I found it possible to think up at least one fun activity per thing in the book, all of which I tried out over the next month or so. Here are some examples that are useable with almost any book, arranged by the part of the book they linked to:
Pictures to colour in
Obviously, small kids love colouring in. To add something more physical before book colouring, get kids to pretend to ‘Colour the table red’ around the class, e.g. by rubbing something red such as their own clothes on the table. For classes that know ‘What colour is it?’ well, you can then test them on the ‘new colours’ of the classroom objects. This could also be played after bookwork.
Letters (including ‘hidden’ letters)
Hide letter flashcards around the classroom, either before the class or with the kids in the classroom watching you, and then get the students to run around and slap or point at the cards as you call them out (by letter, phonic or example phonic word). Move seamlessly into the books by getting them to search out more letters in their books.
Things to connect with a line
Again, getting the kids to do something similar in the classroom before the bookwork makes the transition into bookwork easier and makes the book activity seem more fun. Before drawing lines between two pictures or a picture and a word in the book, get students into pairs holding hands, and ask them to touch two objects in the classroom at the same time (e.g. touch the whiteboard and a desk). As you call out each pair of objects, make sure that it is more of a stretch than the last. Stop the game when no one can manage to touch the last two objects you mention. In small classes, this activity can also be done co-operatively with the whole class holding hands. After the stretching around the class game, you can get students to open their books and touch two or more pictures and/ or words on the page using their fingers (again, choose objects which are a nice stretch away from each other). More advanced classes can continue this as pairwork, telling each other what to ‘connect’ with their fingers. It is then just a small step into doing the same with a pencil line.
Another possible warmer is to have students drawing lines on the board between objects with their eyes closed, with the rest of the class giving instructions (up, down, left, and right). Alternatively, if you have plenty of space on a (clean) floor, you can spread out flashcards across the floor, maybe face down, and get students to join them together by stretching and touching pairs of cards with both legs/ a leg and a hand etc. like the party game ‘Twister’. This can even be extended to touching 3, 4 or even 5 cards at the same time (heads too!).
Pictures
Any pictures in the book can be tied in with counting classroom objects. The teacher says ‘How many (windows) are there?’ and students run and touch or pretend to shoot those objects as they count them. When you say ‘How many spiders are there?’, smart students who realise there are none in the classroom might even reach for their books to search there automatically. You could also have them searching and counting through the whole book.
A quieter game is to ask students to ‘Look look look’ around the room and close their eyes, and then test them on things in the classroom, e.g. ‘What colour is the door?’ This can then be continued on the page with ‘Open your books’, ‘Look look look’, ‘Close your books’ and questions which test their memories and lead naturally onto the bookwork task, e.g. ‘How old is he?’ before writing numbers.
Even if you do all the above before the books are opened, if they get the idea that once the pages are turned there is only boring stuff coming, you won’t fool them that ‘bookwork is fun’ for long- so we need to turn the book itself into fun and games.
Making bookwork fun- with the books open
Again, to come up with ideas for your book, you could use the ‘Look at what is in the book, and think about how we can adapt it and use it to make the lesson fun’ method above. The second method of brainstorming, which I have used with a book for 10 year olds below, is to:
Look at what makes an activity motivating and fun, and see how we can add that to the book
We can try to add:
Competition: points, races, naming the first student to finish (and numbering the others)
Physical activity: rip, slap, hide, splat, turn, open and close, look, scan, twist, stretch
More mental activity: memory games, puzzles
Music, rhythm and noise: chants, sound effects, pair and groupwork- Finished!
Speed: time limits, count downs,
Rewards/ recognition of achievement
Reasons for listening to the teacher and classmates
Reasons for speaking
As an example, let’s look at some fun games students I came up with to use with the pages of SPEC (Shane Primary English Course) 3 bearing these ideas in mind. Most of them will work with almost any textbook page at all ages from 6 to 12 or 13, and can be played before, after or instead of the exercises that are suggested in the book.
Competition
Simplest board game
By getting students to draw arrows between the pictures on the page, you can turn any page of the book into an instant boardgame. Then, with one book per group of 2 or 3 students, each student uses an eraser or something similar as a counter and moves around the board answering questions that their partners ask them about the pictures in the book (e.g. ‘What’s this?’/ ‘It’s a pen’). If the grammar or information in the answer is wrong, they have to go back to their previous square. The simplest way for them to move around the board is with Janken (paper wraps stone, stone breaks scissors, scissors cut paper). The student that wins Paper Scissor Stone can go forward one square and try to answer the question about that picture or word.
Physical activity
Spinning Pen
Rather than moving around a board, students have to spin a pen on the page so that the end of the pen points at one of the pictures on the page. They then answer questions about the picture. If their answer is correct, they can write their name on that picture and get one point. The game continues until all the pictures have someone’s name on them.
Flicking
This time, instead of selecting a picture with Janken or spinning, students have flick their object (e.g. a coin) with their finger across the page to land on the pictures. They then answer questions on the pictures and score as in Spinning Pen above.
More mental activity
Hiding stuff
Whilst the games above are great for drilling the target grammar and vocabulary, they do suffer a little from not necessarily producing real, communicative questions. For example, both the student asking and the student answering ‘What’s this?’ already knows very well what it is, as they can both see the picture and/ or name written in English in the book. This is easily solved by getting the students to hide the things in the book before they ask their partner. They can do this by placing objects on the book page before asking the question. The simplest way to is slam one or more thumbs down on the book and test the other students on what is hidden, or the whole page including the hidden part, e.g. ‘What is he wearing?’/ ‘Where is the blue book?’. More fun alternatives include covering parts of the page with pieces of paper dropped from a height, or Playdoh or Blutack slapped down on the page. For more advanced students, the same game can be played with words on the page as well, for example hiding words in the target dialogue.
Another way to have hidden things on the page is for students to add them themselves, e.g. drawings of little spiders around the page to practice ‘How many’ or prepositions.
Music, rhythm and noise
If you’ve tired your students out enough, they might be happy for a bit of quiet sit down work. If not, you can add more skills and more fun by putting music, rhythm and noise together with what is the usually silent bookwork. The simplest one is just to have a chant that goes together with whatever the kids are doing with the books, e.g. ‘Colour the bag red, colour the bag red, colour colour colour colour colour, colour the bag red’ or ‘Draw a circle round round round round’. As the chant is repeated, it can be speeded up to give some impetus to the slow finishers. This also usually makes the fast finishers keen to join in with the chant, and most of these (very simple) bookwork chants catch on well even without trying to persuade the students to join in. Once the students get to know the rhythm and tunes of the different chants, these can also help them know when to ‘C, L, O, S, E, Close your books!’ etc.
Reasons for listening- with dialogues
In my experience, the part of the lessons where students are most likely to stop paying attention are all connected to dialogues in the book. These ideas should make them sit up and have some fun.
Follow, stop and circle
As the teacher reads through the dialogue or the tape is played, the students follow with their fingers. When the speaking suddenly stops, the students circle the last word that they heard in their books.
Follow the silent voice
In this variation, students look at the teacher moving their mouth silently and circle the word they are on when they stop ‘speaking’. This is good for awareness of mouth position for English pronunciation and body language, as well as being fun!
Find, circle and count
To add a bit more challenge, the students not only circle the word the teacher stops on, but also the same word every time it occurs in the text. They then shout out the number of words they have circled (‘Three’), with points for the first to shout out the correct number.
The teacher is wrong
In this variation, as the teacher is reading through the dialogue they say one word differently to the book. As soon as the students notice they shout out either the wrong word or the right alternative (depending on which rules you choose). Added humour can be added by ridiculous sentences or words. With high level students, the winning student can take the teacher’s role with any of these dialogue games
