Pattern play is a quick and easy way to spice up our lessons for young EFL learners. By adding patterns to our activities we can increase both our students’ engagement and challenge. Take a look below to see how you can add patterns to your English lessons with preschool and primary school students.
Why Pattern Play in EFL?
Fortunately, patterns are naturally interesting and engaging for children. Babies start independently recognizing and using patterns from very early on. For example, they have to recognize the pattern of how eyes, ears, mouths, and noses on faces are laid out in order to see how each person’s face is different from others. They further develop these skills into a foundation of their future skills such as language, music, addition, times tables, geometry.
This affinity for recognizing and learning patterns is strong when children go on into preschool, kindergarten and primary school. By adding patterns of increasing complexity we can connect EFL with other areas of learning, while also making basic vocabulary activities more challenging, enjoyable, meaningful, and memorable.
Types of Patterns
There are many basic types of patterns we can use in EFL lessons. The most basic is the alternating pattern “AB,AB.” In English class we can adapt this for all sorts of vocabulary;
- dog cat, dog cat, dog cat
- brother sister, brother sister, brother sister
- big and small, big and small.
Once children are confident with this simple pattern, they can handle more complicated ones;
- AAB,AAB
- “apple apple banana, apple apple banana”
- ABB,ABB
- “circle square square, circle square square”
- AABB,AABB
- “red red blue blue, red red blue blue”
- ABC,ABC
- “one two three, one two three”
- AABC,AABC
- “pencil pencil pen table, pencil pencil pen table”
Children can also start learning staircase patterns like those used in The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Enormous Turnip, or “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.” These patterns get progressively bigger in predictable patterns. For example, from The Very Hungry Caterpillar:
- On Monday, he ate one apple. On Tuesday he ate two pears. On Wednesday he ate three plums…”
To practice higher numbers, students could try patterns like;
- ten apples, twenty bananas, thirty carrots, forty donuts, fifty eggs, sixty fries…
They can also work with adjective-noun combinations.
- Color Object & Color Object
- “red apple blue apple, red apple blue apple”
- “red fish red fish blue fish, red fish red fish blue fish”
- Number Object & Number Object
- “three balls three balls two balls one ball, three balls three balls two balls one ball”
- “one bird two birds two birds, one bird two birds two birds”
Children can find patterns in basic vocabulary like above, or they can use categories as well. These are more intellectually complicated appropriate for older children and can open up more possibilities.
- Animal Food, Animal Food
- “bird banana, cat carrot, elephant egg”
- People Places Things, People Places Things
- firefighter fire station firetruck, teacher school desk, doctor hospital medicine
- Starting letters
- apple bear bike, airplane bus book
- Flyers & Swimmers, Flyers and Swimmers
- bird fish, parrot penguin, bat shark
Using Patterns in Teacher-led EFL Games & Activities
You can include patterns in a wide variety of English activities for both preschool and primary school EFL students.
The first task is to get students as a class to recognize the pattern and expand on it. Lay out the objects and get students to call them out with you.
Then, ask students what should go after the last one, then the one after that, and so on. You can get higher-level students to explain what the pattern is.
You can use picture cards, drawings, or realia such as crayons, blocks, or toys with younger students. Later on, older children can work with written words as well.
Total Physical Response: You can assign an action for each of the items as well. Students can then mime the actions as they go through the pattern to increase the movement and memorability of the activity.
Chants: Write, draw, or post up flashcards on the board. Get students to chant the words in order multiple times. You can tell them how many times and count down with your fingers.
Magic Eyes: You can also chant through the pattern and then remove one or more objects so students can chant from memory. Keep removing until all the objects are gone.
Coloring Dictations: Create a handout with a series of pictures, each one labeled with a number. Tell students how to color the first two sets of the pattern, then they need to continue the pattern on their own for another set. Make sure each individual picture is fairly small so students don’t need more than a second or two to color them in.
Pattern Puzzle: Make a plan for a pattern. Put the pattern with several rounds on the board, but leave some objects missing. Students have to guess the pattern and make suggestions to complete it. You can put the “missing” objects in a corner on the board to provide extra support to students, or let them think on their own.
Student to Student EFL Pattern Play
Once students are confident with understanding and following patterns they can create their own. This works really well with older students who can write and create category-based patterns. You will need to model the activities and provide plenty of scaffolding the first couple times you try it.
Pairs: Students can write out a pattern and then challenge a partner to continue it.
Small Groups: Students can work in groups of three to five. Each student creates their own pattern and then passes it to the next student who continues it and then passes the page to the next student in the group. Everyone continues writing and passing until the papers reach the original student who then checks the answers.
Mingles Students write their patterns on a paper, stand up and walk to another person. They read out their pattern and their classmate identifies the pattern and continues it for another round. Students write down the answers and then swap roles. Once both students finish they find someone new to speak with. At the end, the students with the longest patterns get to read theirs out loud to everyone.
When to use the Pattern Play:
A lot of pattern play works really well as a warmer, a review, a brain break, or as vocabulary consolidation.
For example, you could write up a pattern on the board before the start of each lesson for students to figure out while they wait.
Also, you might sometimes have 3-5 minutes left of unplanned, left-over time at the end of class. You could create a pattern puzzle on the board for a final, closing review activity to productively use up this time.
What pattern play activities have you used in your lessons?
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