To organise a free-choice classroom session, the teacher has to present a selection of activities or games which the children are already familiar with, and then manage the children’s individual choices from the selection on offer. The teacher can present two or three possible activities, depending on what he or she feels the class can manage. The children’s choices should ideally be made in the previous session, with children signing up for their chosen activity. As places are limited for each activity, some children’s first choice of activity may be full and they may have to make a second choice. The teacher may need to teach them to wait until the next free-choice session for their first-choice activity. For example, the teacher could say Only four names, please. Write your name here. This list is full now. What is your second choice? You can have your first choice next time.
This choosing process involves critical thinking and in the first instances teachers need to help children by modelling how to think through the decision-making process and how to make decisions. This discussion around selection helps to develop children’s social and emotional intelligence, as well as showing children how to appreciate the feelings and choices of others. Initially, the teacher has to lead in the choosing of activities, gradually building up a mode of child participation. With maturity and experience, children begin to organise their choices amongst themselves while respecting the feelings of others.
Within a free-choice session, the role of the teacher changes from instructor to consultant, eventually giving guidance only where necessary. Children should be in control and any interference, except to remotivate, could intrude in the child’s world of reflection as they relive their chosen experience at a deeper level. In flow moments the child is functioning at the highest levels: imaginatively, creatively, innovatively.
Where children have chosen to work in pairs or a small group, the teacher’s role is to encourage collaboration as well as awareness of feelings and relationships, while children gradually become more aware of what they and their peers know (metacognition). Different skills and competences are introduced as each child revisits known activities, exploring, discovering, repeating and practising skills.
Children may discuss amongst themselves in English or in L1. The teacher is there to recast back in English where they have used L1, or to inject a phrase or some vocabulary in English which can blend in with the activity.
Teachers have to bear in mind that in free play the process is more important than the product. Teachers should not always be looking for some representation of the child’s work (or visible outcome) as this could inhibit the child’s present freedom and their future attitude to free-choice sessions. During free choice, children have a real reason to use English. Teachers can discreetly observe and assess where children need additional practice with handwriting and/or developing their usage of descriptive words (adjectives and adverbs).
In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and … SNAP! … the job’s a game!
(Mary Poppins, from the Disney film)
2.3 The child’s expectations of the teacher
2.5 Motivation and emotional literacy
2.1 Acquiring English
Teaching young children effectively is not only about having natural common sense, it is about making sure that one has the knowledge and skills to interest children in the world about them.
(Engel)
The more we learn about neuroscience, the clearer it becomes that the human brain now develops much sooner than we had believed. Early stimulation can be highly effective. The spread of technology means many more young children can be exposed to English, a language different from L1, at an earlier age.
Although the Internet includes some very useful support material, we need to realise that a lot of content on the Internet is privately published and therefore not necessarily rigorously edited – in some cases information may be incorrect or not suitable for young children. For example, on some sites about the analysis of the 44 sounds of English, /oo/ is sometimes portrayed as representing just one sound rather than two (as in book and food). Many children already know this, however, through playing with language rhyming sounds, story refrains and rhymes.
Today’s young children may well have moved into the stage of being able to analyse and recognise patterns earlier than on Piaget’s original scale (see Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive developmental stages). This may be as a result of visual and oral exposure, especially from screens, from an early age. Due to children’s diverse home experiences, it is quite difficult for teachers to assess how these experiences have developed children’s self-learning strategies for language learning in either L1 or English.
2.2 Tuning in
In many primary schools learning language remains a different experience from learning a core-curricular subject like History. Learning language is still a shared activity – a dialogue between the child and the teacher, older children, parents and extended family. Vygotsky used the term ‘social constructivism’ to describe these moments when children and others who are more experienced make meaning together, by both concentrating on the context of an experience.
Without understanding the whole child it can be difficult to tune in to his or her needs. The English teacher needs to know something of the use of languages and the type of English-language interest in the child’s home, in order to measure how much support and encouragement can be expected for homework (which in primary school becomes a regular additional consolidation activity).
Parents also need to understand the teaching methods and their role in homework. Without understanding the importance of the Playful Approach to provide motivation, homework can become a dreaded task. Without cooperation and helpful explanations, parents may find it difficult to tune in to their child’s English lesson positively, or to understand the child’s progress. Parents might compare the English lesson with the teacher-led instruction used in the other subject lessons.
2.2.1 Teacher–child relationships
By primary school a child’s relationship with the English teacher has developed from that of a protective aunty-like figure in the pre-school years, to one of a caring teacher built on mutual respect. As primary-school pupils, children feel more grown up and more