A webinar on using LEGO and Cuisenaire rods in teaching English as a foreign language, held for IATET on 25 June 2014

1. HANDS-ON
Exploring LEGO® and similar toys in teaching
technical English
Anne Hodgson, 25 June 2014
IATET Webinar

2. Overview
• Aims overall
• Teaching communicative skills (generating language)
• Teaching linguistic skills (modeling, focus on form)
• Teaching communicative business skills (presentations,
problem-solving techniques)
• Tips and reflections on developing the best activities for
your learners

3. When do you learn a language best?
What about your students?

4. Two of the keys to effective learning:
Inspired consciousness and hot cognition
“Inspired consciousness is sudden and intuitive, not
deductively rational. It organizes experience, prioritizes
understandings, changes our habitual ways of thinking.”
“Hot cognition can be tied Csíkszentmihályi's idea of flow,
i.e., complete immersion in a task, along with merging of
action and awareness, lack of distraction, subjective sense
of joy and confidence, balance between challenges and
competence, effortlessness, and intrinsic motivation.”
– Rebecca L. Oxford
The Psychology of Language Learners: What We Can Learn from Intercultural Learner Narratives,
Workshop Berlin June 1 2014

5. In their hands:
What have you used to
teach your technical students?Lego, rods, blocks –
manipulables, play
Realia, models –
artifacts, show and tell
Mini whiteboard – blank
slate, complex visuals

6. Skills: What do you want to teach?
Communicative skills
Linguistic skills
Technical skills
Business skills

7. LEGO® and Cuisinaire rods:
A fun solution looking for a problem ;) ?

8. Emma Herrod:
LEGO® in the
EFL Classroom
Post on Teaching Village
27 May 2010
http://tinyurl.com/ljagpqt
1. Running ‘Bricktation’
w/ instructions pinned
outside. Source:
http://www.lego.com/e
n-us/creator
2. Build, write
instructions (whole
class, then pairs), then
others build from
instructions
3. Freestyle: Build a
house together
Communicative skills
Communicative
skills
“I’m a firm believer in the correlation between
creativity and language development. I’m also sure
than when our students have the opportunity to
become immersed in a cognitive and creative task, the
language will fall out of their mouths – I’ve seen it.”
Emma Herrod

9. Mike Harrison
“Make a model out of Lego –
the more complicated the
better!
Place the model somewhere
not all the students in the
class can see. Screens or
office dividers can be good for
this.
Divide the class into two
teams. They then have
15/20/30 minutes to attempt to
reconstruct the model!”
Comment on Emma’s post on
Teaching Village
27 May 2010
http://tinyurl.com/ljagpqt
Communicative
skills

10. Jason Renshaw
“For problems with L1 invasion
of the activity, I have a sure
fire way of dealing with that…
Every time I hear the L1
instead of English, I confiscate
a brick.”
Comment on Emma’s post on
Teaching Village
27 May 2010
http://tinyurl.com/ljagpqt
Communicative
skills

11. http://www.lego.com/en-us/technic/
1. Download visual instructions
2. Each team builds
3. Teams write out instructions
4. Teams exchange and rebuild
each other’s model from the
other team’s instructions
Write technical instructions
Pro:
Merrill Swain, Comprehensible
output: Learning takes place when a
learner encounters a gap in his or her
linguistic knowledge.
Communicative
skills
Contra:
Stephen Krashen: “Their method is to
take someone who speaks no
German, fly them up in a helicopter,
and then threaten to push them out of
the helicopter unless they start
speaking German.”

12. In flow... what are they learning?
Communicative
skills

13. Output:
functions (instructing, checking)
Communicative
skills

14. Modeled input:
storytelling markers, narrative tenses
Storytelling timeline, Cuisenaire rods, look-alikes, learned from Mark Powell
Communicative and
linguistic skills

15. The Silent Way
Cuisenaire
Rods
Caleb Gattegno (Alexandria,
1911–1988)
Visible & Tangible Math
The Silent Way (foreign lang.)
Words in Color (reading)
Method:
• Phonemes assigned to
colors.
• Words mapped in those
colors.
• Teacher points to words,
elicits
Demonstration Diane Larsen-
Freeman/ Donald Freeman
http://youtu.be/xqLzbLCpack
Usage on en.wikipedia.org Silent Way
Linguistic skills

16. Use LEGO® like
Cuisenaire rods
Emma Herrod, Teaching
Village, Part 2, 27 May 2010
http://tinyurl.com/mjjwhgl
1. Compare syntax
2. Visualize sentence stress
(prominence) and word
stress
3. Visualize collocations:
yellow verb + pink noun or
blue adjective + pink noun
Linguistic skills
Communicative skills

17. What I‘ve done...
1. Timelines for “how long” (connecting blocks) and “how often” (separate blocks)
2. Reducing clauses
3. Distinguishing defining from non-defining clauses, adding ‘comma blocks’
4. Visualizing details of connected speech, weak forms, contractions
5. Replacing words with other collocates or colligations
Linguistic skills
... and you?

18. Presentation skills with Hans Rosling
1. Lego, rods, blocks...
Global population growth, box by box – Ikea boxes
http://youtu.be/fTznEIZRkLg
The Guardian: Population growth and climate
change – LEGO http://tinyurl.com/ktjl8tk
Communicative
business skills

19. Presentation skills with Hans Rosling
2. Realia, models,
artifacts
The magic washing machine
http://youtu.beBZoKfap4g4w
Communicative
business skills

20. Presentation skills with Hans Rosling
3. Blank slate/ Complex visuals
Presentations using
Gapminder
Communicative
business skills

21. LEGO®
Serious Play
www.seriousplay.com
http://seriousplaypro.com/tag
/serious-play-case-studies
Think with your hands
Facilitated problem-solving
by building metaphors.
Creative, social, hands-on,
reflective.
Core process:
1. Facilitator poses
question
2. Individuals build their
models
3. Individuals tell their
story
4. Questions and
reflections
Communicative
business skills

22. 1. Practice building
• Build a tower
Mount a mini-figure at the top
• Build a bridge
A football must pass
underneath
• Metaphors
Follow instructions to build,
then discuss the figure.
2. Develop storytelling
• Make up a story, then build a
model to explain an aspect
• Explain it
Get 5 bricks, select 10 more, use
to build a model
• Promote it
Build a simple model, write 5
words that capture what you
want to say about it
Communicative
business skills
LEGO®
Serious Play

23. Tips for working with LEGO and Cuisenaire rods
• Introduce them matter-of-factly
• Explain your aims, not why you are using these tools
• Agree on meanings and stick to them
• When building, create a big clear space
• Use the learners‘ stories, build them into whatever you
are modelling
• Give clear instructions, have learners repeat
• Leave lots of room for play, allow for flow, feedback lightly

24. Visual Kinaesthetic
Abstract Concrete
Reflections:
How do visual and kinaesthetic, concrete and abstract learning differ?
What activities could generate flow?
Develop a conceptual model
/explain using a metaphor
Build a model,
explain how it works
Think with your hands /
create before you speak /
Show/ describe / color-code /
explain pictures /
give instructions in writing /

25. LINKS
Emma Herrod, More Than Five Things to do with LEGO® in the EFL Classroom,Teaching
Village, 27 May 2010, http://tinyurl.com/ljagpqt
Lego instructions http://www.lego.com/en-us/creator
Lego Technic instructions http://www.lego.com/en-us/technic/
The Silent Way demonstration, http://youtu.be/xqLzbLCpack
Serious Play www.seriousplay.com http://seriousplaypro.com/tag/serious-play-case-studies
Hans Rosling presentations
Global population growth, box by box – Ikea boxes http://youtu.be/fTznEIZRkLg
The Guardian: Population growth and climate change – LEGO http://tinyurl.com/ktjl8tk
The magic washing machine http://youtu.beBZoKfap4g4w
Gapminder: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen

26. THANKS FOR
JOINING US 
Anne Hodgson, anne.hodgson@t-online