You can consolidate the target language – The crafts I use often provide more opportunities for the children to hear and use the phrases and vocabulary they’ve heard in a story or classroom games.They can even start to use it to talk about each others’ work. You can also provide exposure to suggestion, opinion and praise language. The children can practise request, suggestion, opinion and praise language – While making the craft, they can ask for the things they need.Much more exciting than using impersonal materials! You can obviously recycle language when you make the crafts themselves and they can essentially create a portfolio of language they have learned for you to review at a later point. It allows you to recycle language – Kids will enjoy coming back to their crafts for recycling language and games.It also provides a memory hook to the topic or story. It provides a visual representation of learning – It’s really motivating for kids to be able to physically see what they have learned.It caters to mixed levels and ages – Every child can participate according to their own ability without having to keep up with the rest (all of our Kids Club English crafts have differentiated variations too, so it’s easy to add another level of challenge for more able kids).These are some of the benefits I believe craft provides for language teachers and their students:
Ok, but surely they can develop those skills in the rest of their lives, right? Why should we worry about them in the language classroom?! In my experience, crafts are really useful to teach English. Being engaged in doing something they enjoy creates favourable conditions for language acquisition.
We’re not talking about the ability to create a masterpiece! This may simply manifest itself in their choice of colour or where they choose to stick an object. creativity and imagination – Doing arts and crafts gives children the space to use their creativity and express themselves.They might need to share materials, comment on each others’ work, help each other with activities, wait their turn patiently, etc. They develop the skills they need to treat others with respect and kindness. social skills – While doing arts and crafts, kids will usually need to work with others, even if it’s only you they’re working with.While doing crafts, they will have to be able to wait their turn, cope with things not going how they wanted, be willing to share, and resist impulsive behaviour. self-regulation – Kids need to develop the ability to manage their emotions and behaviour when faced with a difficult task.Using scissors, gripping crayons to colour, staying within the lines, and holding a piece of paper to glue in place are examples of tasks that require fine motor skills. fine motor coordination – Kids need to be able to use the small muscles of their body, especially their hands, in order to perform more delicate tasks.bilateral coordination – Kids need to develop the ability to use both sides of their body to coordinate movements in an organised and controlled manner.Research into child development shows that children benefit in a number of ways from doing arts and crafts. With more time-consuming, elaborate crafts, my language aims are based more on classroom language and opportunities to explore unplanned language that comes up in conversation with the kids – what I call ‘Craft through English’. I do! But in my classes, I usually plan my daily crafts to consolidate specific language points – what I call ‘English through Craft’. It’s not that I don’t think these more elaborate crafts are valuable.
While many people will think of more elaborate constructions as ‘real crafts’, as an English teacher, I tend to reserve those for special occasions such as Halloween, the end of term, or as part of an extended project. So, in this way, even simple colouring or cutting and pasting activities are considered to be crafts in my classroom. They need to use their hands to follow the steps, they’ll use tools (such as crayons or glue), and they’ll have something to show for their efforts. This basically means that there are steps the child has to go through. I consider it to be any structured activity that involves using the hands and other tools to create an end product.
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