From reluctant participant to beaming performer….in just three days

My last lessons before the arrival of the 25 young people from Heart Global I was encouraging my pupils to be open and simply enjoy the three days of workshops that lay ahead.  There was also to be a performance at the end of the third day, but I’m not entirely sure how many of them realised that they ALL would be taking part. 

Despite my enthusiasm, (we’ve had the group in school several times before, but not for the last five years) I didn’t get the feeling that the pupils were convinced.  Complaints came from some that the start of the workshop days were too early and the finishes too late.  Many, possibly most, hadn’t taken part in a performance of any kind since they were at primary school.

Three day later, on the extensive stage of the floor of a nearby sports hall, 140+ of our pupils and the young performance coaches from around the world performed a one and a half hour show twice in one evening and afterwards were beaming about the experience and appeared rather reluctant to go home and bring this three-day cultural experience to an end.

The kids were happy, the parents were happy, and we the staff were also happy.  We had seen our often all too cautious pupils, reluctant to stand out from the crowd, brought to the point where many as well as participating in the large-scale group parts of the show, had also been persuaded to perform short singing or dancing solos.

How had it been achieved, well, I suppose it comes down to several things.  Firstly, the shear exuberance and enthusiasm of the Heart Global group, they simply sweep everyone along.  They support, they nurture and guide.  Pupils don’t feel alone, they feel supported and encouraged.  As one pupil put it, it was like it was peer pressure in reverse, refusing to participate became strangely ‘un-cool’, or put more positively it was cool to participate, and everyone did, even if, in the end, they found their favoured place to be towards the back.

What did they learn from the experience?  Certainly, that stepping outside of their comfort zone can in the end be exciting and give you a tremendous buzz.  Then there is the fun of working on part of a large group project can result in creating something impressive that is so much more than a collection of individual efforts.  Also working with other young people who are just so enthusiastic about what they do, this really is a beautiful aspect to see.  The pupils may not go on to become any sort of performer, but they will have learnt so much about themselves, about others, about passion and enthusiasm and what it is to stand on a stage.

So much of school life is classroom based and focused on academic performance.  Let us not forget the importance of formative experiences like this, they are hugely important…..even if the pupils at the start don’t think that they need the experience.

…..and that is why cultural activities in schools are so important.

Art lessons, homophones and Ukrainian homophones

It’s a bit of an end of year project for me with the 13-14 year-olds that I teach.  A short, essentially creative graphic design assignment with a language twist.  In short, we take homophones (a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning), and design pictograms that illustrate the two different meanings.

I’ve written about the activity before, and that post can be found here:https://petersansom.wordpress.com/2015/03/26/homophones-clil-art-and-english-assignment/

This year I did much the same again, asking the pupils to produce a pair of matching pictograms that illustrate the contrasts in terms of language and meaning.  This year I offered the possibility to produce a handmade drawn result or a more graphic digitally made result.  Below you can see a few of the results.

All well and good you might say.  But for the last few months I have had two new additions to the class, Ira and Iryna from the Ukraine.  They’ve been two fantastic additions to the group.  Despite all that is of course playing out in their lives, they have been enthusiastic and extremely creative members of the class.  They have enjoyed the freedoms of the art lessons, that were rather different to the style of teaching they experienced back home.  I should also add that their level of English has allowed them to slip easily into the bilingual class that has been their educational home since arriving.

When I explained the homophones project to the class and set them to work on an initial bit of brainstorming and sketching out of possibilities I turned to Ira and Iryna, had they understood the project?  Had they grasped the eccentricities of this particular corner of the English language?  I didn’t have to worry, with an excited look on their faces they announced that they wanted to do the project using Ukrainian homophones, and off they went making plans for the illustrations for examples from their own language that they were able to share and explain to me and others in the class.

As it turned out there are homophones that the two languages share, such as organ (the musical instrument) and organ (the part of the body), but there were others that in English showed absolutely no connection at all!

World CLIL Conference, The Hague

Conferences are back on the agenda, and I am ending the school year in The Hague for two days to attend one that has been in the pipeline for more than two years, the World CLIL Conference.   CLIL, content and language integrated learning has been the main stay of my type of educational practice for the last twenty plus years.  Yes, I’m an art teacher, but in the bilingual educational context that I work in, CLIL is my methodology, combining the teaching of art with the intensive and immersive use of a second language teaching (the use of English when teaching Dutch children art in my case).

That sounds quite simple, a different language of instruction during the lessons.  It is of course that, I speak only English with the Dutch children I teach, and the language of the classroom is English.  But good and slightly more complex CLIL teaching goes several steps further, and it is this that the conference this week is about, and what the consequences are of this approach.

I gave a workshop as part of the conference but have also dosed up on CLIL input that hopefully should give me ideas and angles to explore in my teaching next school year.

I don’t attend a great many conferences, certainly not in the last couple of years, but it is so good to escape the humdrum classroom life.  These are the battery recharge moments that I’ve missed immensely. The chance to listen, hear new and different perspectives and simply just to reflect a bit on what we do and perhaps what we could be doing is something we don’t get the opportunity to do enough in educationland.

Particularly for those who attended my workshop during the conference, below there is a link to the PowerPoint that I made use of.  It is not completely ready-made lesson material, but it is certainly enough of a reminder of the content we covered and offers the necessary basis material that may be of use to you.

Language and Images PowerPointDownload

More playing and language integrated learning (PLIL/CLIL)

A couple of blog posts ago I coined the acronym PLIL, a variation on CLIL.  I make use of CLIL (content and language integrated learning) in much of my teaching, where I lead my art lessons with classes of Dutch children in English.  They receive the art and the second language content simultaneously and in doing so pick up the language acquisition at a hugely increased pace.

PLIL is similar, but the content is simply replaced by play.  There are plenty of situations in education where you are not directly involved in content from one of the subjects that you may be teaching in a school context.  Play, and simply messing about with the children can equally be twisted and turned to increase the language learning opportunities.

Simple word games that I dip into at the end of a lesson fit into this area.  For example, you pick a theme, ‘animals’ for example.  The first child says the name of an animal, ‘tiger’ for instance.  The second child has to pick another animal that begins with the last letter of the previous animal, so maybe ‘rhinoceros’. Then we get ‘snake’, ‘elephant’ and ‘tarantula’.  You’re not allowed to repeat an animal, and you are not allowed to hesitate/think for more than a few seconds otherwise you are forced out of the game.  It’s play, fun and laughter in the last few minutes of the lesson.

Fridge poetry tiles

I have more of these sorts of activities that I draw on from time to time.  Sometimes though, unusual situations throw up new possibilities. A case that illustrates this was a couple of months ago when five colleagues and I took ninety twelve-year-olds on a four day excursion to the coast.

The days were filled with all sorts of activities. Games, walks, playing on the beach, eating together, sports and so on.  I’ve been on such trips often enough and know that on occasions you want to offer small rewards for winning, participating well, being especially helpful, maintaining a tidy room or even complimenting a teacher on how young they look!  (That last one didn’t ever happen until we started playing this game!).

The idea grew out of the fridge poetry sets that you can buy, where you have an assortment of words stuck on your refrigerator door that you can rearrange from time to time to create poems.  I wondered if we, as teachers, could have a pile of printed out words in our pockets and bags that we could hand out when a reward was needed?  Would the pupils want to collect them to be able to play the word game that we would announce at the end of the week?  It was an experiment, but it worked exactly as we hoped. These random words on little pieces of blue paper became ‘collectors’ items’ and were rapidly hidden away when handed out.

The pupils were sleeping in rooms of four or six generally and we instructed them to pool their words and together to puzzle out the most imaginative, poetic, surreal or simply strange sentence or sentences that they could form from their words.  And surreal they were, as they stretched sentence constructions and grammatical knowledge to squeeze out the best possibilities.

Below are a couple of the ones we liked the most (Maasland, is the name of our school!)

The idea was simple. It served several purposes, but most of all, it offered the chance to have fun and be creative with language.  We’ll be repeating the idea.  Maybe our basic collection of words needs to be fined tuned a little here and there. The little linking words, the likes of or, and, then and is are perhaps less fun to ‘win’ than a fought or swallowed, but in the end every bit as important for making a sentence that hangs together well.

An unfinished CLIL plan, or is it PLIL? With thanks to Bruce Springsteen

I call it PLIL, because this is more like playing and language combined, rather than pure content as we are more familiar with from CLIL (Content and language integrated learning).

I’m always interested in finding new ways to combine a little extra culture and language into my lessons.  This is an idea that arose kind of by accident in an online exchange of messages a few weeks ago with a couple of friends.  The messages ranged through various themes, but as I remember it, Bruce Springsteen was mentioned, Cathy, one of those involved in the discussion is a big fan.  Also, rather randomly, a woman riding a horse was also mentioned……and that was, as it turned out, not an unimportant point.

To amuse myself and, I hoped, the others in the discussion, I decided to write a short fictious exchange between me and an imaginary stranger (the woman on the horse!).  The challenge I set myself was to try and squeeze in as many Bruce Springsteen song titles as possible into my short text.  I am reasonably familiar with Springsteen’s body of work, but after Googling his musical biography I was surprised by the sheer amount, but also the number that were going to be useful for this challenge.

The titles available dictated to a large degree where the narrative headed, but in a way that was the fun of this word puzzle.  It is all about playing with language and in my art and culture CLIL classroom that is very much the sort of area that I like to search out and make use of.  In this case selecting out the words and phrases that are loaded with possibility and then working out ways to link and connect them without altering any grammar or phrasing in the existing titles.

The result of my own puzzling went as follows:

I saw a woman on a horse yesterday,

I asked were you ‘Born in the USA’?

Yes, she said, in the ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’

And ‘Growin Up’ I asked

Mostly near ‘Harry’s Place’ she replied

So this isn’t exactly your’s or my ‘Home Town’ I remarked

No, not ‘This Hard Land’ she said, ‘I’m working on a Dream’

You ‘Walk like a man’ she went on,

I’m ‘Outlaw Pete’ I said as threateningly as I could

Am I being ‘Held up without a gun’?

I was hoping for some ‘Easy money’ I said

Go and jump in ‘The River’ she replied……and rode off.

I haven’t actually tried this activity in class yet, but I plan to soon. I’m not a music teacher, but within my broader culture lessons this can certainly find a place.  I think my third years (aged 15) could have a pretty good go at this.  We will doubtless end up in discussions about which artists and musicians are the best to use.  They’ll have their own favourites.  But it will be interesting to see if they offer such content and grammatically rich pickings.

In my work as an artist, I spend a lot of time playing with images and forms, working out ways to combine and connect them.  It is an approach I love to make use of in the classroom too.  It maybe with paint, collage or other materials, but I really don’t see this form of play with words as being so very different to that.

A classic poem in a CLIL context in the art room

Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll

Combing content and language in the learning process

For a while now monsters of one kind or another have been a feature of the lessons that I give to my groups of twelve-year-old pupils.  We’ve done various drawing assignments, made clay gargoyles, and dipped into art history by looking at the work of the likes of Hieronymus Bosch.

With these classes, being bilingual learners (Dutch children, being taught across their timetable in English in order to super-charge their acquisition of the English language), I am always looking for ways of enriching the practical lessons with elements of language beyond simply using it for instruction.  For example, recently I have had the class writing haikus that were inspired by the clay heads that we made together.

This year though I decided to branch out in a slightly different direction and make use of Lewis Carroll’s poem The Jabberwocky.  The monsters connection was obvious, but how to work with it with these children who are only eight months into their experience of bilingual education was the question.  Would they be ready to deal with this curious piece of literature?

I needn’t have worried; they were up to it.  When I asked them to read the poem for themselves and underline all the nonsense words, they were able to complete this first challenge without any problem at all, their vocabulary being sufficiently developed to spot the words in amongst the text.

Next, we spent time thinking of alternative words that could be used to replace the nonsense in the middle section of the poem.  Again, no real problem.  An occasional grammatical error or slip in the spelling perhaps, but they were definitely onto it, and understanding the intention completely.

The fun and laughter really started when I asked them to come up with their own nonsense words for the first and last verse.  At this point I wondered if the imaginary words they created might end up having an English or a Dutch feel to them.  It was of course all nonsense……but to me, the words that they were coming up with did have a distinctly English twang to it and they generally nestled perfectly well into the context of Carroll’s poem.

The link below allows you to download a step by step guide to the language part of the lesson.

jabberwocky-lesson planDownload

With this language component of the lesson series complete, we moved on with enthusiasm to work on a more than five-meter-long group drawing of our own Jabberwocky.  The result of the drawing project can be seen here, but how exactly we arrived at the composition and in what order we did things, are details I’ll save for another post.

A small (post) Covid mile stone last week

I know that we might not yet be fully out of the woods with regard to reflecting on how Covid has got in the way of any number of things during the last two years. But there was last week, for me at least, something of a fairly large step forward.

For the first time since November 2019, I was part of a multi-day excursion together with a group of ninety twelve and thirteen year olds, and five colleagues.

Four days eating, playing, learning and relaxing together…..plus of course getting the pupils to bed and asleep in their 4-6 person bedrooms at the end of the day (always one of the most challenging parts of this sort of week).  Virtually all Covid restrictions have just been removed here in the Netherlands, so there was no one and half metre rule, no face masks and full buses to transport us.  Judging by the weeks immediately previous at school I had fully expected a small but significant number of cases to occur, but thankfully that was an absolute minimum.  One case during the visit and a couple in the days thereafter.

All in all the days away felt surprisingly normal, at least to the teachers involved.  We had all made similar trips before.  To many of the pupils it was all a bit of a new experience, with these sorts of extra-curricular activities being so scarce during the last two years. 

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Normally we would head off abroad, but this Spring that was still just a step too complicated and risky in terms of planning and potential problems.  So, it was all nearer to home.  Easier to arrange, but sadly without the international dimension and the language challenges that come along with it.

We hope to take a similar group off to England in the autumn, we’ll have to wait and see what surprises the pandemic may serve up then.  We will also be facing up to the full-blown version of Brexit, with all the restrictions and complications for EU travellers for the first time.  But that is a completely different story and one that I wrote my irritations and frustrations about a couple of months ago.

Cooperative and collaborative learning – lessons from the artroom

Arguing, discussing, instructing, squabbling…..call it what you will, it is all communication.  And communication is a crucial and live part of any classroom and in particular the bilingual classroom.  Here we are encouraging the pupils to practice and use the second language (English in my case) as they participate in my art lessons.

A well-constructed group/collaborative project forces communication, discussion, and consideration with others.  I often find myself saying to the Dutch teenagers I teach how much I love when I hear them arguing in English, it underlines how far that they have come in their mastery of a new language.

A well-constructed collaborative project may have relatively modest artistic aims but could have a very significant goal in the use of clear and concise communication within the group.

A class reworking of Guernica using collage of war related images and text

Such projects are a work-form that I have made a lot of use of over the years, I found myself hanging one up on the walls in school only last week.  But beyond the communication issue there are several other educationally sound reasons to be making use of such projects.

• The result is ‘greater than the sum of the parts’ argument and a chance to produce something big with a wow effect!

There are many reasons why in art lessons we often find ourselves working on a relatively small scale.  Storage limitations, costs of materials, time pressures, large classes, the necessity for pupils being able to take work home with them, they all play a part.  A group project allows the pupils to see something different.  A large-scale project spreads across the classroom floor at the end of each lesson, slowly taking form and seeing how their own section of it contributes to the big visual statement that is developing.

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• It seems to force the underperformed in the group to up their game

Every class has them, the pupils who are content to do just enough in their work to gain a (just) sufficient grade.  It continues to surprise me how working within a group project, where their contribution is visually so obvious, the result is often that these very pupils feel the pressure to up their game.  There is, it seems, nowhere to hide, rather different perhaps than with a written group project. 

• It shows pupils that often very complex and ambitious work is possible if it is broken down into smaller parts…..rather than feeling overwhelmed by the challenges ahead

This is perhaps most a benefit to those who are the more interested in art and want to produce the best possible results in their own visual work.  They suddenly realize that given time, and perhaps a slightly more systemic approach than they might usually use, could lead them too towards making more impressive and resolved individual work.

Tim Rollins and KOS

And on a personal note, it allows me to borrow from an important art educational influence, one who is responsible in part for me making the step into working with young people, Tim Rollins and KOS.

While I was still studying for my fine art degree, I watched a documentary about Tim Rollins and the Kids of Survival.  At the time I didn’t really have any plans to enter education, but the film gave me a glance into what might be possible.  I found it fascinating and inspiring.

About a decade later I was lucky enough, while doing my teacher training course in Utrecht, to observe a guest workshop given by Rollins to other students.  If there was ever anyone able to demonstrate the power of the group project it is Rollins, and a fantastic example of the “result is greater than the sum of the parts” argument I mentioned earlier.  Fantastic to see, and for a teacher in bilingual education, all the more inspiring for the way in which language, text and literature found its way into the work.

Tim Rollins and KOS on Artsy

A bilingual start to the year – art and language workshop

It has become a regular day out in September for me.  A trip to the Merlettcollege in Cuijk to spend a day with the new bilingual class giving them the full on immersion experience of a solid day of intensive English language use and practical activities.  It is a day that makes use of a whole variety of approaches designed to unlock the pupils prior knowledge in the areas of language and art and to stretch them into new areas.  My own use of English, and only English, is chosen to try and prevent the pupils slipping back into Dutch and by only slightly modifying my own use of vocabulary I hope to stretch the class into new areas that are perhaps just a small step beyond their current level.  This does mean that perhaps the pupils occasionally miss a small part of the instruction.  But then, we all miss pieces of instruction from time to time even when we fully understand the language used.   But it is in this way, where we struggle to make the very best use off our current knowledge, that the learning process is often at its most effective. This sort of ‘in at the deep end’ is at the basis of the bilingual classroom and where it really comes into its own. 

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This year’s group in Cuijk was been a good one. A class of 30 twelve year olds who are just two weeks into their bilingual journey and receiving the main part of all their subjects at school in English for the first time.

It was rapidly clear from initial reactions from the class that it was a day where I would be able to work at a considerable pace.  I was making few extra adjustments in my teaching.  Many of the day’s activities had a game-like quality and the pupils were only too pleased to play along and show off their knowledge and ability in English.  We talked about art, we wrote poetry, we discussed journeys and travelling and we drew pictures, bouncing freely from one activity to the other.  The day seemed to fly past.

I have two personal favourite activities from those I used. Firstly, there is the Haiku poetry writing where I can stand back and watch the children searching through their own English vocabulary, whispering words to themselves and counting the syllables of each possible word on their fingers, looking for the perfect fit for their poem.  Then there is the picture drawing activity when someone else is describing what you have to draw. This second activity always brings a lot of laughter with it, whether it is me describing and the children drawing or the other way round.  Both variants involve pushing the language abilities into new more precise and descriptive areas and connect this with picture making….the ideal combination for the bilingual art teacher!

Personal bilingual education milestones x2

During a slightly quiet moment at a conference in Brussels about a year ago, a colleague and I were reflecting on our working lives in education, and in particular on where we currently teach.  I say currently teach, but that makes it sounds like we are always switching from one school to another. But that for us is definitely not the case. As it has turned out we have been in for the long haul.

Cathy Silk and I started work at the Maaslandcollege in Oss on the same day back in 2001 and have continued our parallel educational routes ever since, Cathy in the English department of our bilingual stream and me in the art department.

During our reflections last year we found ourselves recalling pupils that had passed through our classrooms, colleagues who have come and gone, and just how many lessons we must have taught.  We also made the calculation of how many weeks of teaching we had given to our school.  As it turned out, back then it was around 950 each.  Yes, we were each nearing 1000 weeks of teaching in Oss.  Further calculations and we knew that the milestone of 1000 weeks would occur in mid-November 2020.  We could have a small party we thought, maybe a sort of reunion with some colleagues, ex-colleagues and  pupils, nothing too official, just an occasion to mark a point in a journey that continues and to involve some people who have shared it with us.

So here we are in November 2020, 1000 weeks of teaching later, but no party.  Like so many festive moments, plans have been disrupted.  That is of course no big deal, there are more important things in play at the moment, and such an anniversary is just a moment in time.  But it is worth reflecting on what has caused Cathy and I to have stuck around in the same school for so long.  I think I can probably write for the both of us in saying that quite a few things play a part.

Firstly, being part of the bilingual educational project in the Netherlands and, at the Maaslandcollege in particular, has been both fascinating and rewarding.  Our school was one of the first to begin this form of education back in the mid 1990s.  A form that sees Dutch children taught in English in order to fast track their language learning abilities and ultimately brings them to levels that surprise me every year.

Our colleagues, both present and past have also been a reason to stay.  An enthusiastic, social and knowledgeable group.  In the occasional dip moments there have always been people around to remind you that it is a school that makes you want to be part of the team.  One colleague, Lobke, should get a special mention, she was a twelve old pupil at the school, starting the very same week as we did.  She is now an established member of our bilingual team as a biology teacher, a reminder for us both in the staffroom of the values of the bilingual program.

Educationally, both Cathy and I, have always been given considerable freedom to form and shape our own teaching programs.  This is without a doubt one of the main reasons we have remained so steadfastly committed to our Maaslandcollege.  By giving teachers space to explore and experiment in their work you keep them interested, enthusiastic and awake to new possibilities.

But then there is the school itself.  On paper it is a fairly standard looking sort of school, 1500 or so pupils, quite comprehensive in terms of the educational streams that it offers.  But apart from the staff, it is of course the pupils who make a school. It is difficult to calculate just how many Cathy and I must have taught over the years, other than to say that it is plenty!  They arrive as, maybe rather uncertain of the themselves 12 year olds, you fight and joke with them through the middle years of their secondary schooling and finally they depart with their diploma and a sort of mutual respect as arrived in the relationship.

It’s nice to be able to follow many of my ex-pupils through Linked-in.  The contact is low-key, but does let me see what some of them have moved onto do.  I think also gives the pupils themselves a sort of contact route with something of their own formative teenage educational years.  It’s a line of contact that is very definitely open (as far as I am concerned) to go further if the need presents itself.  Before the summer I was able to help an ex-pupil with the development of a museum educational program she was working on, and next week I will be doing something similar with another who I last taught, I think, about six years ago.  As a teacher, such moments are really greatly valued educational extras.

It is always nice to run into ex-pupils, on the train, at the station, in the supermarket.  It reminds you just why you are in education.  For both Cathy and me it is especially rewarding when these chance encounters involve a young (Dutch) adult launching into an enthusiastic conversation with us in English, fluent and without hesitation, reason enough to have stayed around to reach that 1000 weeks mark!