ESL Drills

Spelling Bees – A Brief History

07/26/2020 by admin

Though this post was intended to be exclusive to my weekly Fun Facts About English, I feel that, given the events happening in the United States in 2020, this bit of history is quite apropos and a story worth sharing more widely. As Americans, we are being called upon to acknowledge our racist past, join together in solidarity, and move forward with greater efforts to ensure equality and fairness for all Americans — including those seeking asylum on our shores.

Kinney Brothers Publishing Spelling Bees A Brief History

I hate to admit that, even given multiple tries, I probably wouldn’t be able to spell the two dinosaur names above. I sit in awe of people who spell well. I also know I’m not alone when it comes to my spelling disabilities.

The English language has had spelling issues for a very, very long time. In centuries past, there have been compilers and reformers who tried to catalogue and standardize the English language. From Richard Mulcaster’s The first Part of the Elementarie in 1582, Samuel Johnson’s comprehensive and highly influential dictionary of 1755, and Noah Webster’s 19th century American dictionary, we are making strides toward standardization, but the myriad exceptions force us to rely on rote learning and memory to be a good speller.

Blue-backed Speller Kinney Brothers Publishing

First published in 1786, Webster’s spelling books, known colloquially as “The Blue-backed Speller,” were an essential part of the elementary school curriculum in the United States for five generations. These spelling primers were the impetus for the earliest spelling contests; an activity to motivate students to learn standardized spelling. The first such spelling matches were recorded in 1808. From about 1850, local events were referred to as “spelling bees.”

The word bee has been used to describe a get-together or communal work, such as a husking bee, a quilting bee, or an apple bee. The word likely comes from a dialectal been or bean, meaning “help given by neighbors” from the Middle English word bene.

Spelling bees were usually held in individual schools and towns and weren’t yet nationally organized. In 1908, the National Education Association (NEA) held the “first national spelling bee” in Cleveland, Ohio as part of its 46th annual convention. The NEA Spelling Bee was a team-based competition held at the Hippodrome Theater where six thousand people attended, including convention speaker, Booker T. Washington.

NEA Spelling Bee Kinney Brothers Publishing

Even before the competition, some members of the all-White Louisiana team took offense at having to compete on the same stage with Ohio’s racially-integrated teams. Nonetheless, Marie Bolden, a thirteen-year-old Black girl from Cleveland, was named champion and awarded the gold medal. Marie’s victory made national news because it upset the day’s stereotypes about what Black children could or should be allowed to accomplish. Back in New Orleans, the local Black YMCA organized a spelling bee in honor of Miss Bolden’s victory, but the mayor, embarrassed by the upset in Cleveland, withheld the permit and canceled the event due to tensions “over race questions.”

Seventeen years later, in 1925, the first annual United States National Spelling Bee was held in Louisville, Kentucky, and was sponsored by The Courier-Journal, a local Louisville newspaper. The winner was eleven-year-old Frank Neuhauser. In celebration of his victory, Master Neuhauser met President Calvin Coolidge, was awarded five hundred dollars in gold pieces, given a hometown parade, and a bicycle by his school in Louisville.

In 1941, the Scripps Howard News Service acquired sponsorship of the spelling contest, and the name changed to the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee. This was later shortened to the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Today, the organization is administered on a not-for-profit basis by The E.W. Scripps Company from its headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio. The contest has been held every year except 1943-1945 due to World War II, and 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 1994, the competition has been regularly televised on the cable-television sports channel, ESPN.

Although most participants are from the U.S., students from countries such as The Bahamas, Canada, the People’s Republic of China, India, Ghana, Japan, Jamaica, Mexico, and New Zealand have competed in recent years.

Spelling matches have come a long way since the early 19th century. Today, we can view the competition from home and watch movies about the fierce competition and gargantuan effort these kids make to reach the grand stage. If you’re a teacher, student, or parent interested in organizing local spelling competitions, visit the Scripps National Spelling Bee website where you can download information booklets and read more about the awesome kids participating in this yearly event.

Back in the U.S.A.

05/18/2020 by admin

When I moved from Tokyo, Japan, my home for almost 25 years, I went from one of the most densely populated cities in the world to one of the most sparsely populated areas of the United States: Coconino County in northern Arizona. Located in the high desert on the Colorado Plateau, and favored by astronomers for its lawfully protected and shockingly clear night skies, the high desert is an area of rocky soil, flat-topped mesas, and miles of sweet-smelling Ponderosa pines.

From my small danchi apartment, I moved into a 2000-square-foot house sitting on 20 acres of land on an open-range cattle ranch called Howard Mesa. Just getting to the highway from the house required a fifteen-minute drive on a winding and corrugated cinder road. Over time, the cinder dust will kill the electrical system in any vehicle and I was forever dodging wildlife that seemed to think that a moving vehicle is something to run toward. There are prairie dogs, bobcats, wild pigs, vultures, rattle snakes, roadrunners, coyotes, white-tailed deer, a billion jack rabbits, and of course, cows; free-ranging and enormous black bovines that suddenly appear in the pitch-black of night like apparitions with glowing green eyes. God forbid you should hit one of the them. Besides the damage to your vehicle, you can expect a costly reimbursement to the rancher.

Upon exiting Howard Mesa, you turn onto Highway 64; a narrow, well kept, and very busy two-lane state highway. Traveling this country tarmac are two categories of people: locals and tourists. In their dusty four-wheel drives, many of the locals are, by noon, three sheets to the wind. The tourists number in the thousands every day, speeding to and from the internationally-famous Grand Canyon – a mere 50 miles away.

Keep in mind that five million people visit the Grand Canyon every year! International and American travelers alike often fly into Phoenix, rent a vehicle, hop the freeway for a three-hour, steeply-ascending drive, and exit onto Highway 64 for the last 50-mile-leg of the journey. At the north end of the highway is the Canyon’s South Rim, the most popular tourist destination for viewing the 18-mile-wide gorge.

For anyone traveling into the the landscape of the American Southwest for the first time, it is truly, truly awe-inspiring. Though we’re quite familiar with postcard and calendar images of places like Monument Valley, the Petrified Forests, or Meteor Crater, when you actually visit, it’s almost surreal. Spatial relativity starts to disappear and the heat and wind can be intense. Driving into Sedona, near Flagstaff, or through the Native American Reservations, is an eye-opening look at the varied lifestyles of Americans. It can be so challenging to your senses that you’ll be forever changed, or dead if you’re not careful.

When you’re on Highway 64, there are signs warning you about animals like deer and elk. They’re big, gorgeous beasts and hitting one will send you floating into the clouds with a new set of wings and strumming a harp. Once you arrive at the Canyon, more signs warn that people die every year falling off the cliffs, or hiking down into the Canyon unprepared where they expire from dehydration. If you run into trouble on a trail, the only way out is by helicopter or mule. Outside the relatively small tourist area with family-friendly guard rails, the trails are completely unguarded and the only safety barrier is your own common sense. When taking selfies on the edge of a cliff, remember, there are wind blasts that will knock you off like flicking a crumb off your sleeve. The Canyon is so beautiful, so vast, and unbelievably… well, grand, some people can only respond by having a panic attack.

If you’re a foreign tourist, it would be easy to think that everyone else traveling down Highway 64 is an American. You couldn’t be more wrong. The two times I pulled much-derided American SUVs out of snowdrifts, they were Europeans. You know those ridiculously huge and laughable RVs that look like apartments on wheels? They’re probably rentals driven by Canadians or Swedes. I know because I filled lots of their propane tanks. How about the troops of leather-clad motorcycle gangs? They’re surely Americans! Possibly, but they’re just as likely to be German or Polish motorcycle clubs doing an American road trip. In this mix are the daily convoys of Korean and Chinese tour buses traveling north to the South Rim in the morning and rushing back to Flagstaff at night. Today’s Japanese are more likely traveling in family sedans or with friends in a rented Mustang convertible – the most coveted rental car for visitors to the Grand Canyon. At the Canyon, you’ll find multilingual park rangers and over 2,000 publications in Chinese, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and Korean!

On a northwest curve on that two-lane highway is JJ’s, a small, 6-pump gas station where I worked part-time. A magnet of activity, locals come daily for beer, tobacco, propane, and to jaw. The tourists arrive by the hundreds to refuel and recoup after the hot and forever-uphill drive from Phoenix. They spill out of their cars, vans, and buses to ask the number one question: “Where’s the toilet?”

In front of JJ’s you can chat with Native Americans selling their colorful handmade jewelry. Inside the store, you can pick up postcards, souvenirs, maps in multiple languages, sodas, candy of every stripe, T-shirts, and peruse a large selection of sweat shirts, because few are prepared for how cold it gets in the high desert. If you have a query, you can ask in English or Spanish. My presence as a Japanese speaker was unusual but came in handy many times – and usually to everyone’s surprise. If you’re lucky, you can take a selfie with the Cataract Creek Gang, a friendly band of cowboys hanging out in the parking lot. The dusty rascals regularly stop by JJ’s for snacks before mounting their horses and robbing the Canyon-bound passenger train.

You know that shopping role play you do in your ESL classes? The task is to go to the counter, pay for snacks and gas, and maybe ask a question. Working at JJ’s was the real deal and I carried out that task with foreign speakers of English all day long. Let me tell you about some of my experiences and observations.

Nervous and tired, foreign travelers often rely on the kindness and patience of the stranger behind the counter. Some, on the other hand, aren’t nervous at all and won’t shut up. Most do their best to just get through the transaction with as little confusion as possible and the hope that their foreign credit card works, which it sometimes doesn’t. Gallons, liters, petrol and gas are the words customers stumble over the most. And, to be sure, I keep in mind that I’m not everybody’s bloody English teacher.

But, let’s begin with traveling Americans. Mostly outraged by the cost of gas in the area, many are as much a foreigner to the southwest as any international traveler. They also cross a wider demographic: young, old, wealthy, and poor. Americans most often travel with families, clubs, and religious groups. Accents range from the flat dialect of the Midwest to fast-talking northern Yankees, or the sweet southern drawls of the Southeast states. Americans are as likely as any foreign traveler to be looking for exotic souvenirs when perusing the Native jewelry sold outside. Many are genuinely surprised (or annoyed) that the person pumping gas next to them is speaking French or German. Their all-American vacation turns out to be more international than they could ever have imagined.

Then, of course, there are the much-berated Mexican immigrants. I quickly began picking up store-related Spanish: banos, hielo, etc. The friendly Mexican cowboys were many. They were swarthy, plaid-shirted young men with pearl snaps, tan galán hats, more rodeo than most urban cowboys, and sexier than all get out. Damn! Sorely aware of their own lack of English, they usually took care of their business all too quickly and were out the door. In one memorable conversation with an older cowboy who spoke with blended Spanish and English, he told me that he never gets wet in the rain because he dances between the drops.

Europeans come to the station counter speaking English most every time. They’re generally polite and comfortable speaking sometimes limited but colloquial English. It always takes a bit to figure out the American system of buying gas as we usually pay by the dollar amount and not volume, with the biggest quandary being how many “gallons” it will take to fill their rental’s tank. Europeans are also the most surprised by the American fountain drinks and have to be reassured that, as illogical as it seems, small or ridiculously extra large, it’s still 99 cents. And if you catch me cleaning the toilets, there’s no need to tip.

Indians? These frequently seen tourists can be fountains of conversation! They are often smiling, inquisitive, and hang around the store the longest. One young man followed me all around the shop up and down five isles as I mopped the store floor – talking the whole time. When a local tribe of goats got loose and tripped down the hill to the station grounds, I could have sold tickets to the comedy that ensued. As I tried to trap them in the women’s outside toilet, a flurry of Indian ladies came flying out the narrow door trying to avoid the confusion of bleating animals. Eventually, the animals’ owner came down and deftly corralled them back up the hill.

Another day, a pack of Polish motorcyclists arrived; TALL, leather-wrapped, and mustachioed men, looking like models for Tom of Finland. Though their English was limited, they kept everyone in the shop thoroughly entertained trying on cowboy hats and playing with the Native American pipes for sale. When one asked where he could get some American marijuana, locals happily chimed in with advice and pulled out their own state-issued medical marijuana cards.

Most often, the Chinese and Koreans, like the Japanese of old, travel in large groups with one in their retinue dealing with any verbal transactions. The rest of the group pile goods on the counter willy-nilly and with no regard to queuing up. A nightmare for a cashier. Other Asian travelers come in assuming that everything is up for barter. With sympathy-invoking sighs and pleas of poverty, they usually exit the store with only a Cup Noodle and leave behind a large pile of T-shirts to be refolded.

One night shortly before closing, the quiet store suddenly filled up with a busload of noisy Chinese tourists who moved quickly among the narrow isles of the just-mopped store. When one young woman spied the store cat sitting on the counter, she pointed at the animal and let out a terrified shriek. Just as suddenly, the store emptied as the entire band of travelers rushed Helter-Skelter out the narrow door and I watched the bus flee into the night. It was a real Twilight Zone experience and is still a mystery to me.

The Japanese? Though predictably polite, they came to my register speaking Japanese almost every time. 満タンまでお願いします！(Fill it up please!) Over time, I learned that it’s easier to just go out and pump the gas for them. One day, a handsome and well-dressed JPop singer traveling with his male companion arrived in an expensive little sports car. He took lots of selfies and his travel companion reminded me several times (in Japanese) that his friend is very famous in Japan. Upon leaving, his 名刺 (business card) was handed to me like a precious keepsake. I Googled him later. ‘Famous’ was a long stretch.

One morning, a red-haired and freckled Russian couple stood at the counter for almost an hour talking about their experience of fleeing the U.S.S.R, finding refuge in the States, and raising their two sons in the rural Midwest. It was their third family trip to the Grand Canyon.

Occasionally, the children of tourists are sent to the counter to conduct their own transactions and to practice their English while a parent stands by watching. High fives and free candy are the reward for their efforts and the teacher in me is flooded with contentment.

Mixed into all this international activity are the locals. Everything you may have heard is true: fiercely independent, go-it-alone homesteaders, and staunch open-carry advocates. There are Mexican immigrants and Native American rodeo riders, artists, outcasts and ne’er-do-wells, all surviving a harsh land with an “all or nothing” attitude.

I have to give credit to the locals as they were extremely patient with the presence of so many foreign travelers and more than happy to give directions or advice. Anyone living in the area understands that tourism is what greases the wheels of the local economy. Many residents are very poor people who work at the camp grounds, restaurants, and motels, cleaning up the detritus left behind by travelers, wiping down the toilet seats, and tolerating the sometimes condescending attitude toward their sad, sad American poverty.

Though I now live with my brother, Mike, in Austin, Texas, the transition I made from the Far East to the American Southwest was stark and memorable… kind of like the first time I arrived in Japan from Iowa so many years ago. After 25 years abroad, I couldn’t have picked a better place to reacquaint myself with America, bring my overseas experience into the fold, or have done so in a more beautiful place as the high desert.

If you visit, and I hope you do, slow down, drive safe, and enjoy the view.

Donald Kinney

Taking it Online

03/03/2020 by admin

With the unexpected cancellation of classes, keeping your classes going online is a real option and the next best thing to actually being in the classroom. So, what platform do you choose? Google Classroom might be the answer for you.

Signing up for Google Classroom is free for personal use and a business account starts at a very reasonable rate. Once you’ve signed up, it’s easy to navigate and you’ll be communicating with your students from anywhere – even if you decide to take your own vacation during this time!

To get started, watch the tutorial video below. You’ll quickly see the advantages of having an online portal available and, once you get up and running, I’ll bet you’ll never turn back!

https://edu.google.com/products/classroom/

Besides the virtual classroom, you’ll have access to content-creating apps like Google Slides and Google Forms, the ability to schedule content on Google Calendar, plus a host of useful tools and options for organizing virtual courses and separate classes.

When you’re ready to start loading content, here are some free Google Slides resources I created for my own classes. Just click to download the files. Copy the resource link to import them into your own account and you’re all set! You can distribute them to your students for use during live-streaming classes or make them available for download for scheduled assignments and review.

ABC Bingo – abc Bingo – Color Flash Cards

Book 1 – Be Verbs – Book 2 – To Be Past – Animal Puzzles

For more digital activities, click on the links below. The full Stories For Young Readers series is available as a paperless resource with the same rigor and exercises as the printed textbooks! You’ll also find CVC word activities, flashcards, and a variety of Bingo games!

Paperless Stories For Young Readers Lesson Packs

Digital Flash Cards – Digital Activities

Stay safe and best of luck in your classes!

Donald Kinney
Kinney Brothers Publishing

Stories For Young Readers – Planning Ahead

02/03/2020 by admin

Kinney Brothers Publishing Stories For Young Readers

No matter the time of year, I get inquiries about the best way to purchase Kinney Brothers Publishing textbooks and downloadable resources. You shouldn’t have to worry about getting the materials you need for your students. We offer many options so you can make the best choices for your classes. Check out these posts if you’re looking for phonics or supplementary materials for your classes.

The Stories For Young Readers series is available in a variety of formats and sources. For online shoppers, this series available through Amazon.com worldwide! In Japan, the series is published by Independent Publishers International (I.P.I.) and available with a special discount through David Paul’s ETJ Book Service. For pdf and paperless downloads, visit Donald’s English Classroom!

The Stories For Young Readers series includes questions, grammatical explanations, exercises, and puzzles for beginning students. The books are designed to extend students’ skills and interest in communicating in English. Teachers can utilize the stories and exercises for listening comprehension, reading, writing, and conversation. Book 1 focuses on present simple and present continuous reading exercises. Book 2 takes students further with simple past, past continuous, and simple future tenses.

Check out the previews or download the first readings from Book 1 and Book 2 for free! They include audio files, answer keys, and dialogues!

Stories For Young Readers Book 1 Kinney Brothers Publishing

You’ll find an abundance of support materials for this series in our online store, Donald’s English Classroom. Visit for downloadable flashcards, charts, games, textbooks, answer keys, and audio files.

Stories For Young Readers Book 2 Kinney Brothers Publishing

You might also be interested in Dialogues for Young Speakers – a series of dialogues and surveys designed to extend students’ conversation skills. Following Stories for Young Readers, the dialogues progress from present simple to present continuous in Book 1, and simple past, past continuous, and future tenses in Book 2. Not only will teachers find a wealth of material that will get students up and talking, the dialogues also prove that students can effectively communicate with even a limited vocabulary. You can download these textbooks online, order directly from the Kinney Brothers Publishing web site, or order on Amazon.co.jp. Download previews for Book 1 and Book 2 here!

Dialogues For Young Speakers Kinney Brothers Publishing

If you’d like to learn more about all Kinney Brothers Publishing has to offer, please download our catalogues! Peruse the complete lineup of our Global Edition ESL Textbooks or check out our ESL Store right from your desktop! Sign up for our newsletter and download a free CVC I Have/Who Has Activity Set!

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me at info@kinneybrothers.com.

As always, best of luck in your classes!

Donald Kinney
Kinney Brothers Publishing
kinneybrothers.com

Paddywhack

01/03/2020 by admin

In September, I mentioned that I’d been writing a weekly Fun Facts About English series, and my original goal was to produce 50 posts. This week, I’m at number 38 with a topic that I’m pleased to re-encounter. I thought I’d share it as a regular post with some added personal history.

Kinney Brothers Publishing Fun Facts About English 38

One year in late October, I introduced the song, This Old Man, to my kindergarten students for the December talent show (お遊戯会); a tune unfamiliar to my Japanese colleagues at the time. The Encho (Director) grilled me oh-so-condescendingly about the meaning of certain lyrics like ‘nick-nack paddywhack,’ stating she had to explain the meaning to parents who ‘desperately wanted to know.’ In those pre-Internet days, I had few avenues for such research. The best I could say was that the words were largely nonsensical though rhythmic word-plays meant for children. The Encho escalated the issue wanting to strike the song from the program when an amazing thing happened. In December, This Old Man appeared in a catchy television commercial and poof! the controversy went away. With the song included in the talent show, it created the appearance that the kindergarten had its finger on the timely pulse of popular culture. I was off the hook and, by the time of the show, everybody was humming the tune.

Since then, I’ve done my research.

The Fun Fact above collapses two very separate periods of history regarding This Old Man, as the rhyme itself goes back hundreds of years, long before hitting a linguistic and cultural pothole in the Victorian era.

Besides a slap or a sharp blow, paddywhack also refers to the tough neck ligament found in many four-legged animals such as sheep and cattle. Even today, this chewy and protein-rich ligament is often sold as a dried dog treat.

This Old Man
This old man,
He played one,
He played nick-nack on my thumb,
With a nick-nack paddywhack,
Give a dog a bone,
This old man came rolling home.

Though it’s difficult to determine the exact meaning of the Old English counting rhyme, there are clues as to what it may be referring. One is “nick-nack” and the practice of “playing the bones.”

After a feast of lamb or swine, the Irish would fashion the animal’s rib bones into a musical instrument held between the fingers and clacked together, aka playing the bones. This evolved into the more contemporary playing of spoons. Nick-nack refers to the clacking sound of the bones, much like we say rat-a-tat-tat for the sound of a drum.

It’s also important to note that bones used in this musical fashion dates back to ancient China, Egypt, Greece, and Rome.

English timeline Kinney Brothers Publishing

As for a ‘severe beating,’ though recent interpretations point to Victorian (1840s) slang and giving an Irishman (Paddy) a whack, paddywhack’s much older etymology connects the word to paxwax, the Old English term for an animal’s nuchal ligament. The word whack, meaning to strike forcefully, doesn’t appear until the early 18th century and may be derivative of the Middle English word thwack, as in “I shall thwack him senseless!” Paddy, as in “an Irishman,” is from the late 18th century and is a derisive nickname for the proper Irish name Patrick (Pádraic, Pádraig, Páraic). In short, paddywhack, Paddy, and whack have completely separate etymologies.*

On the other hand, it’s easily imagined that the long, elastic paddywhack of an animal could be used as an instrument of discipline – much like ‘getting a switchin’ with a tree switch, or a ‘paddlin’ with a wooden paddle. Ouch!

Be sure to check out the three videos below – living proof our ancient musical and linguistic history is still alive!

Check out Dom Flemons on his Youtube channel!

George Gilmore – Akron, Ohio

Check out Abby The Spoon Lady on her Youtube channel!

As always, best of luck in your classes!

Donald Kinney
Kinney Brothers Publishing

*When researching This Old Man, it was shocking to find some wildly speculative theories on the origins of the song. One lengthy Reddit thread suggested that the song was about a perverted old man who played sexually provocative games on children’s body parts. Another blogger made a clumsy (and flat-out wrong) assertion that the song was about poor and starving Irish who traveled in wagons selling knickknacks and the English who would rather give a dog a bone than give money to a “Paddy.”

We must be very careful about what people may imagine as opposed to what historical research can actually tell us. Though paddywhack is now incontrovertibly linked to Victorian-era animosities, its origins are far more culturally rich and enjoyable.

The Drama is Real

03/30/2019 by admin

You may view drama only as entertainment, but dramatic exercises can be valuable teaching and language-learning tools. My intention with such activities is not to create an actors’ studio; it’s to get students up, moving around, and interacting with each other in more meaningful ways. Where words and their meaning can seem abstract in a textbook or vocabulary list, dialogues and scripts contextualize language. Drama brings expression and emotional depth to language and makes it far easier to remember than rote memorization. Countless studies and research have shown that bringing dramatic exercises into the classroom can give students the confidence to move outside of the learning box to use their language skills. Finally, theatrical play promotes class bonding and trust among its members.

Mull these figures around in your head for a few moments…

UCLA professor Albert Mehrabian broke down human communication in conditional studies as follows: 55% of communication is through body language, 38% is tone of voice, and a mere 7% relies on the meaning of the actual words themselves! To wit, much of our communication is nonverbal! In the classroom, vocabulary lists don’t come with facial expressions and textbook explanations don’t have hand gestures and body language; essential elements of how we communicate with one another. These aspects of language have to be experienced and then experimented with as part of language learning.

I’m going to lay out some easy theatrical activities and exercises you can use when teaching. I’ll start with younger students and gradually move into exercises for more advanced language learners. Finally, I’ll offer some suggestions if you’re looking to bring full-on dramatic play into your classes.

But first, let’s start with the central performer in the classroom – you, the teacher. Good teachers learn how to pace their presentations, move with deliberation, and can write a complete sentence on the blackboard while eyeballing their students. You prepare props, modulate your delivery to keep your audience focused, and take bold action when making an impression is necessary. You can radiate warmth like a spotlight and your stare can make a roomful of students deadly silent. Guess what? You’re an actor! Kudos for all you do and the effort it takes to build trust with your students!

Let’s Pretend

Children are naturals when it comes to pretending and will often indulge themselves if given the opportunity. All you really need is a bit of imagination and a willingness to make-believe. With your youngest students, playacting can begin with the songs, flashcards, and other activities you’re likely already using. Some of my earliest Q&A drills lay the foundation for future dialogues — the stuff scenes and short skits are made of. Anticipate that the vocabulary you’re teaching today is fodder for future scripts.

Flashcards – Instead of just flipping through vocabulary decks, bring out your verb or animal cards for some charades-like fun. Give students or teams points for guessing the word being acted out. There are lots of other ways of bringing your flashcard routines to life. Click here for 50+ Flash Card Activities.

Chants – If you perform chants, always include actions and props when possible! Chants have legs and they dance about in children’s heads right out of the classroom.

Songs – Like chants, choose songs that can be easily introduced with flash cards and simple actions. Whether you teach kids classics or contemporary originals, they should impart meaning to a young language learner. Teaching your kids full musical medleys with multiple verses of unintelligible syllables, only to impress parents, is a waste of valuable class time.

Dance – Dance doesn’t have to be a series of complicated steps. Think of Ring-Around-the Rosie, or Hokey-Pokey. Even simple choreography gets the blood flowing and makes your kids mentally in sync and physically working together.

Q&A – I start my kids early with simple greetings and Q&A activities with each other – no sing-song group drills! Early drills include greetings, asking their names, age, school, grade, etc. Varying the exercises with directives like whispering, yelling across the room, or singing in an operatic voice make routines less repetitive, more dynamic, and just fun! Try placing a sight barrier between you and the kids or have them do a drill with their backs to each other. Give toy telephones a try! It’s hilarious and kids have a great time! Experiment with funny voices and try familiar drills as a robot, gorilla, or a dopey superhero. My classroom had a broken intercom phone that I regularly used to call famous actors, presidents, and astronauts in space… to ask about their favorite color or animal.

Surveys – Though not dramatic, easy, picture-oriented surveys get students up and asking each other questions in and outside of class. The key is getting kids to engage. Give your kids a surveyor’s clipboard and send them out to interview friends, teachers, policemen, etc. Here are four easy surveys you can download for free that may give you ideas for creating your own. Click on the image below to download.

Puppets – I’ll be honest. I don’t do puppets. On the other hand, I have watched puppets being used quite effectively by very talented teachers. If you are so inclined, hand puppets are a great way to quickly move children into an entertaining make-believe space. Perform Q&A drills with googly-eyed sock puppets behind a whiteboard or desk. This also works well for demonstrating a dialogue when you have no one to help you!

Easy Dialogues – Here are three easy dialogues I use with my kindergarten and first-grade students. Because my classes are only 50 minutes once a week, I start building these dialogues using drills early on. As a teacher, you can easily discern the modular building blocks underlying each dialogue. Begin with a short exchange and over time, slowly add to it to include emotions, likes and dislikes, birthdays, pets, etc. Where students can exchange real information, it makes for more meaningful interactions. When performing these scenes, all you need is an imaginary door, a table, a couple of chairs, a few props, and voila! Theater!

Fairy Tales – Turning children’s stories into skits is a great way to get kids performing in English. Many fairy tales can be adapted with super simple dialogues that will accommodate your students’ levels. They also provide a variety of characters that will work with larger classes. Although such stories are the material that yearly recitals are built on, a skit doesn’t have to be complicated or stressful – nor does it have to be a dog and pony show just for parents. A script, children’s imaginations, and a few handy props are all you need. Click here or the image below to download three well-known children’s stories broken down into easy scripts. They’re free and you are free to use them.

Easy kids’ dialogues can also be built on repetitive language and a simple comedic scenario. Shelly Ann Vernon’s website offers (paid) scripts and game ideas for fun dramatic play. Be sure to check out the short video scene at the top of her page about a bus driver and scroll down for another skit called, “Doctor! Doctor!” The Czech kids in the videos do a GREAT job and are obviously having so much fun! Ms. Vernon also offers a sample script from her product lineup called, Ready, Steady, Go! These examples might spark some ideas for your own classes where you can build mini-plays aligned with the language you’re teaching in class.

If you need basic drills for young students, download these sample drill worksheets from Q&A, a compendium of question and answer drills with simple present through simple past tense worksheets.

ESL Q&A Kinney Brothers Publishing Donald's English Classroom

Older kids…

With reading skills under their belts, older kids and teenagers can tackle dialogues and scripts with more varied language, such as telephone conversations, or an easy scene from a script. Taking a dramatic paragraph from a familiar story and asking students to bring it to life is a fun and easy exercise. Don’t be afraid to include the elements that make drama so enjoyable: murder, deceit, love, kings, witches, and croaking frogs!

Speaking of croaking, ask your students who can die with the most melodrama! Believe me, some just can’t let it go without a good measure of moaning, sliding down furniture, and death rattles. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve given up the ghost in class. Be willing to be the first to release your mortal coil and bask in the appreciative applause of your students.

To quote from my previous post, Drills, Dialogues, & Roleplays, dialogues work well to simulate real conversations and get kids interacting. Here are some tips when performing any kind of dialogue, tragic or not.

Before presenting the dialogue, introduce the topic of the dialogue by fielding students’ interest or knowledge of the subject. Providing students with pictures that may accompany or are similar to the dialogue, can warm students up with relevant vocabulary or grammatical structures.

Have students listen to the dialogue and explore specifics about what they heard. If you have no recordings, set up two students to read while the rest of the class listens.

Give students only one side of the dialogue and have students participate in reading and listening.

Have students reorder a dialogue that’s been cut up into its individual lines.

Try out your acting skills and use the dialogue as a telephone conversation where students only hear one side of the exchange. Who was on the other end of the conversation? Mother, teacher, or friend? What questions did they ask?

Perform the dialogue in fictional circumstances. How does the same dialogue change in a library as opposed to a crowded cafeteria, or on a cold day in the park as opposed to a sunny beach?

You may be pleasantly surprised at the willingness of students to play and the creativity they will exhibit. Look for dialogues where students can exchange and interchange information for more meaningful interactions.

Dialogues For Young Speakers provides guided dialogues and surveys that were created with easy and natural language for beginning students. Check out these sample pages and they may spark ideas for your own original dialogues! They’re free. Enjoy.

ESL Dialogues For Young Readers Kinney Brothers Publishing Donald's English Classroom

More Advanced Activities

Roleplays fall into an improvisational category where an outline or circumstance is established and an outcome is sometimes predetermined. The purpose is to move performers through a mock experience. For ESL students, roleplays can be for simple life skills that include telephone conversations, interviews, or business-related matters. Like any improvisation, students have to be on their toes and bring all their language ability to the fore.

Download these free sample business roleplays from Trends, a compilation of readings and exercises for intermediate and advanced learners. Try them out in class or use them as a guide in developing your own roleplays!

Trends Kinney Brothers Publishing Donald's English Classroom ESL roleplays

Scene Studies allow you to bring your favorite film or play scripts into the classroom. Don’t forget to include stand-up comedy or commercials! Movie scenes are also readily available on YouTube and other video sites so you can show students how scenes play out. You’re only limited by your students’ English levels, their willingness to play, and the constraints of your classroom.

The internet has many scene databases for actors to sharpen their skills or select audition material. Such sites offer downloadable film and stage scene scripts divided by gender, number of actors, and script types, e.g., comedy or drama. Here are three sample scenes downloaded from Actorama, an actor’s call-board website. Click here or the image below to download.

A Readers Theatre can be a very enjoyable activity and requires no sets, costumes, props, or memorized lines. Consider dramatic segments from your favorite children’s story or comic book for students to practice their oratory and character skills. Voice-over actors are paid handsomely for their reading talents; a skill any language learner can practice on their own!

Here are excerpts from three children’s fairy tales – a genre rich in melodrama. Who among your students can chew the scenery with the utmost angst?

Improvisation For many, full-on improvisation is difficult for the simple reason that, like life, there’s no script. Improvisation will challenge your acting and listening skills to their limits! For effective improvisational exercises, direct your actors to follow one simple rule: you can’t say ‘no.’ This means if I have a fancy lampshade on my head and tell you I’m the King of Spain, go with it… you wretched peon; otherwise you kill the scene! Improvisation is about as close as you get to spontaneous, real-world dialogue, getting students to thinking on their feet, listening, and stretching their language ability. Here are a few example ‘scenarios’ that are typical of improvisational setups. When divvying up scenes, write the scenarios on cards and allow students to choose in a blind drawing.

Ex: Two people, who divorced a long time ago, happen to meet each other in a bar after many years. They strike up a conversation.
Cops and Robbers: Two students pair up. One of them is a thief standing outside a bank at 3am. Another is a policewoman on her beat. How does the conversation go?
Time Machine: In a group of people, one person realises they have been transported to a different century.
Neighbors: A group of people are at a raucous party. It’s 2am. There is a knock at the door. It’s the neighbors.

Final Stage Notes

Stage Directions If you’re going for a full-blown theatrical experience with your students, you should have some trade lingo tucked in your bodice.

Stage right and stage left indicate the point of view of the performer standing on the stage. House right and house left describe the same directions as if you are sitting in the audience, also known as ‘the house.’ So, if a director asks an actor to move house left, she moves stage right.
To move upstage means to move toward the back wall of the stage and downstage is toward the audience. Traditionally, stages were raked so you were literally going up and down the stage. To upstage another actor means moving up the stage so that other actors must turn around and lose the audience when addressing him — consequently throwing focus on the ‘higher’ actor. This is a rude and manipulative no-no among performers. Actors must be keenly aware how they cheat and favor their actions on stage when playing to an audience.
Blocking is the directed movement and placement of actors on the stage.
Props, or properties, are the objects that actors handle during a performance.
To go up in the middle of a scene means forgetting your lines, as in “He went up and the prompter had fallen asleep!“
Finally, lest ye awaken the evil spirits, no whistling backstage and never wish an actor good luck. Say, “Break a leg!”

Trust – Drama classes and ensembles employ a variety of trust exercises to create a bond amongst their members so they feel comfortable taking creative risks with each other and work together as a group. These are usually simple, physical exercises that promote listening, interacting, and laying your trust in a partner or group. Here are a few examples.

Trust Fall is an activity where one person, with a stiff body, has to fall backward while her partner has to catch her.
Blind Walk is an activity where one person is blindfolded and walked through a simple obstacle course with his hand on a partner’s shoulder.
Helium Stick involves a group standing in a line or a circle. All participants hold their hands out in front of them, parallel to the ground with index fingers pointing out. A stick (in a line) or a hoola-hoop (in a circle) is placed on top of their fingers. The object of the activity is, as a group, to lower the object to the ground or transfer it to a surface without losing contact with the object.

Listening is a powerful skill that can be nurtured and is imperative in any kind of performance. On a practical level, a performer must learn to throw focus on a speaker without upstaging. When directors talk about building character relationships, they are often talking about how well actors communicate which includes listening to each other. Actors who don’t listen well don’t create good character relationships. There’s a life lesson there…

Drama Queens I’ll be the first to admit, there’s nothing I enjoy more than being in front of an audience. My first calling was to the stage. A ham I am. Nonetheless, it’s best to remember that good theater is built on actors working together. There is nothing more tedious than a prima donna who expects everyone to recognize their star quality. Encourage your actors to work together as an ensemble and everyone will have a lot more fun.

With careful planning and a willingness to play, drama and dramatic exercises can enhance your English classroom curriculum.

Break a leg!

Donald Kinney

Kinney Brothers Publishing