Extra time? Try finger puppet presentations.

It’s May, and you’ve got extra time on your hands. Perhaps the proficiency assessment is over, or the last unit went faster than expected. Maybe signing ceremonies or ring ceremonies or a horse race (yeah, I live in Louisville) is messing with the schedule and making it so one period of Level 2 has an extra class.

What do you do?

The answer is not Encanto.

You could always show a movie, but hitting play on a TL movie and sitting back to relax is one of the biggest wastes of class time for any student below Intermediate Mid, and even worse if you put on English subtitles. I’m sorry, it just is.

Let’s look at the extra time as a gift. This set of students has extra moments in which to get more input and interaction (what I’m calling I² these days). As always, you have a primary goal of comprehensibility and as it’s May, you have a secondary goal of please do not give me more work to do.

So, how about puppets?

I’ve always heard that kids and teens love to talk about themselves. I don’t know if it’s that times have changed so much or what, but for my crew, it doesn’t ring true. My learners decidedly don’t always like to talk about themselves. And frankly, sometimes pushing them to do so can put the whole language experience at risk. It can increase anxiety. It can bring up content and structures they’re not ready for. It can get your whole class into the weeds. Building relationships with kids to the point they trust you to help them is one thing; keeping a whole-class language-building activity from turning into an impromptu counseling session is entirely another. (Remember, you’re not the therapist in the room.)

I’ve got a solution for you, and it’s imaginative, anxiety-free (mostly, anyway), and builds proficiency. Read on.

Step 1: Build a puppet supply.

Over the years, I’ve collected quite a supply of finger puppets. I have the Christmas ones, the cheap animal ones, and even a fabulous Diego Rivera puppet I acquired, I think, at a PD session presented by the eminent Diego Ojeda. He’s magnetic. He hangs out on my dishwasher sometimes. (Rivera, not Ojeda.) We also use a quite special, whole-hand armadillo puppet that became our class mascot after my late father sent it to me (complete with a name and a baseball card, it’s a long story) in my first year teaching.

Large collections of finger puppets are ridiculously cheap and easy to get on Amazon. I believe this one is the one I carry around. In a pinch, you can of course use stuffies. If you haven’t started that collection yet (and you should), possibly another teacher has some you can use. You can also print some and glue them to craft sticks. Let your creativity loose, but don’t stress.

Step 2: Frame the presentation, by level.

You can do this in a number of ways, and all of them are extremely low (or no) prep. The key is to make it appropriate to the level you’re teaching.

What’s the topic?

To make this easy to do with spur-of-the-moment extra time, establish some topics to use. You might write topics on crafts sticks or on papers you put in a jar. You might decide you’ll just ask a student to open to a random chapter in a textbook, or even a chapter in a CI novel.

For lower novices, the topics will include basics like introducing myself, telling age, likes and dislikes, talking about my family, etc. As proficiency goes up, you might add talking about where I live, who my friends are, activities I do on the weekend.

Who’s talking, and how much?

What if you have elementary early novices who can’t say much yet? The easy answer is that you’ll be talking, using sentence frames. For example, you’ll hold up the puppet and greet kids, and expect a greeting back. You’ll frame it up with “My name is…” and invite kids to supply the name. In this way, they’re getting more comprehensible input without having to produce much target language. You can also give either/or answers for frames like “Today I want to… (eat pizza or buy a bicycle?).”

If learners are above that level, of course, just let them have at it. You can still do a demo at the beginning, and even intervene every other time, or less frequently, so they are getting more accurate input from you. Remember, large chunks of inaccurate input from classmates with low proficiency isn’t going to help anyone much.

Step 3: Increase engagement by setting a goal.

Of course, your goal here is to use extra class time wisely with a low- to no-prep activity that fosters proficiency. But will they pay attention, because remember, attention is the key to memory? Here are some suggested goals to set for them:

• Which puppet would they want to be friends with the most, and why?
• “Who” (the puppet, of course) gave the most interesting presentation?
• What five words do you remember from this one?
• Name one thing you have in common and one thing you don’t with this one.

What other goal-setting questions could you ask to keep their attention?

Your turn. Share your favorite tips, links, etc. for what to do with extra time that still keeps proficiency in mind. What’s your favorite class puppet/stuffy? What other topics would be great here?