Puppeteering on IATEFL's Young Learners webmagazine

I am very happy to share that my article on puppeteering as a way of creating affective language learning experiences with primary learners was featured together with other very interesting ones in the digital issue of  IATEFL's Young Learners and Teens magazine. This issue was edited by the competent David Valente and also features my dear friend Kylie Malinowska, who was previously interviewed in the blog. 

Click here to read the whole magazine! Enjoy it!

Do you have interesting experiences to share with the world? 

Get in touch with IATEFL's Young Learners and Teens Special Interest Group and publish your voice!

Hugs from Brazil, 

Juan

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Affective Language Learning on video!

During my world tour I have had the great pleasure of being and learning with over 2500 children and 460 teachers in many different and very diverse countries. When I close my eyes I can recall the joy of children during my Buddy shows and the engagement of teachers during the affective language learning sessions I have given. Watching yourselves through the eyes of others is a very intense experience as it allows us to see how we stand, talk, and interact with others. More than that, it allows us to really rediscover who we are. 

I would like to thank Jim George from Luna International in Matsumoto, Japan and Ansemf Bae from FIN English in Daegu, South Korea for having gracefully created videos of me during my sessions and shows.  These sounds and images have allowed me to know myself better and are valuable gifts that I will keep forever. 

Thank you so much Jim and Ansemf for taking the time to create these lovely videos. 

It's my great pleasure to share them now with you. 

The first one shows scenes from the Affective Language Learning session given at JALT Shinshu in Matsumoto: 

The second one is about a frog that visited Matsumoto:

And the third one shows highlights of two shows that I did with Buddy in two different schools:





Hope you have enjoyed them as much as I do.
Which was your favourite moment? Leave me a comment!


Hugs and hugs,

Juan

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Puppeteering again at Hanazono Kindergarten!

Hanazono Kindergarten in Gifu, Japan

Some moments in life have really touched me with sheer joy.  One of these precious memories certainly was telling stories and puppeteering at the two Hanazono Kindergartens in Gifu last year. These performances were truly a challenge for me as my audience was composed of more than three hundred Japanese young language learners aged from three to five. All at the same time! 

Butterflies in my stomach. 

Guess what? I loved it! 

Buddy and I felt super loved before, during, and after both of our presentations. We were welcomed with lots of warmth and excitement by every single person we met at school. Children shouted hellos, teachers served us tea, and our pictures were in the hall. Buddy and I were kindly introduced to the kids, children enjoyed the kamishibai stories, and everybody laughed a lot with our puppeteering. After the show children sang and danced a marvellous thank you song, I got the most amazing medal, and had some delicious cake. We truly felt as kindergarten pop stars!  

As I planned to come back to Japan, I hoped to be able to return to Hanazono to have a similar experience again. As you have probably guessed, fame is highly addictive. 

But would I have the same feelings? 

Could I run the risk of losing that great memory that I had experienced there? 

It was even better! 

Taking the classic photo before my second show at Hanazono Kindergarten in Gifu, Japan in 2014.

I felt much more confident as I knew the children, the school, and had been successful in the past. Many children  remembered Buddy and I guess me too. The difference was that this year I had the whole fifty minutes with Buddy instead of alternating telling kamishibai stories with some puppeteering sketches as I did last year. This represented a real challenge as I could run out of time or maybe lose the momentum with the kids. 

This year children were to teach Buddy how to sing the songs they know in English. I also chose three sketches that I knew children would love. These were Buddy farting and pooping in his potty, teasing him with a huge inflatable hammer, and having Buddy flying over the kids with a balloon. With these three powerful acts I was ready! 

Children greeted us joyfully, laughed loudly at our jokes, and participated giving lots of commands. Everything went well and Buddy and I have now double Hanazono memories!                                                                                                                                                                                                    I gained lots of practice and confidence in my puppeteering skills with large groups and I feel now very empowered to get even better at it. ( Puppeteering can also be highly addictive, beware!)                                                                                                                           

I plan to invest in my professional development as a puppeteer to be able to come up with a much more elaborate experience for children all over the world. Buddy is also very excited about all this! 

Last year we got a medal from the children and this year it was the same. 

Can you notice any difference? 

Here you can watch a clip that I have prepared for you with some of the best moments of these two performances. Enjoy it!

I would like to thank Mark Kulek who has made these magic moments possible not once, but twice. Mark is the founder and director of Gifu Kids which is a lovely school for kids in Gifu as the name says it all. Mark has also had the privilege of teaching these lovely children at both Hanazono Kindergartens for the last eight years. 

Mark is now a friend who I admire both personally and professionally. 

What are your best memories with young language learners? 

Have you ever had similar challenges to mine that you simply loved? 

Send you a big puppet hug,

Uribe Sensei

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Thank you! 

Puppeteering interviews with Queenie Tan!

During last Young Learners' Day at TESOL France I had the great pleasure to meet  Queenie Tan and her assistant Jennifer.  Queenie is a well-known author, podcaster, and early childhood educator who lives in Hong Kong and has dedicated herself to educating parents and teachers on how they can become more affective and effective parents and teachers. She has a website and there you can learn more about her books, listen to her podcasts and interviews and much more.

Queenie, Buddy the Frog, and Jennifer in Paris. 

Buddy and I were not interviewed once, but twice in Queenie's show! But how did that happen?

Well, Queenie first interviewed us on how teachers can teach using puppets and then many of the parents that follow her parenting channel liked our interview so much, that they asked us to come to Queenie's parenting channel to talk about how parents can have quality time with their children living imagination and creativity with puppets.


In the first interview Buddy and I shared how teachers can get started in puppeteering and how language development, emotional intelligence, and proactive discipline can be fostered through puppeteering.

Here you can listen to our first interview with Queenie Tan! (audio only)

In the second interview the three of us talked about how parents can use puppets to play with therir children and therefore create memorable moments.

Check here our second interview with Queenie Tan!

Wish you great puppet moments with your children and students!

Which part did you like the most?
Do you have any question that you would like to ask me or Buddy the Frog?


Send you a big puppet-hug directly from Japan!

Juan


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Check also this video with more puppeteering hints!

Certificate in Affective Language Learning (CALL)

  

"People do not care how much you know, 

until they know how much you care."

Theodore Roosevelt

The Affective Language Learning Certificate was created to empower educators with postures and practices that foster caring, supporting, and energizing language learning environments. The course is the result of over 20 years living, studying, discussing, and sharing how positive emotions boost students' self-esteem, confidence, and motivation to learn a foreign language.

The Certificate is offered in two versions: 

The Short Certificate is a two-day course composed of four or six workshops that will allow your staff to experience how affective language learning happens in theory and practice. Workshops in this course usually include affective language learning, holistic language techniques, storytelling, puppeteering, and affective resources. 

The Long Certificate is a four-day course composed of eight or twelve workshops with the objective of going deeper in both theory and practice. This course is for schools that would like to have affective language learning as a strong market differential. The content can be created through a mix and match of different themes according to the needs the school is facing. 


These are the themes that I am currently offering: 

Affective Language Learning: how can language teachers promote learning through the integration of emotion, cognition, and language? In this session we will learn, experience, and discuss how presence, communication, respect, and power sharing can create effective learning environments. Check a post about it. 

Holistic Language Techniques: here we learn how the language teacher can respond to students’ linguistic demands through success-oriented interactions that promote pleasure, spontaneity, and language ownership from the early stages with very young learners to advanced fluency with pre-teens. Check a post about them. 

Affective Classroom Management: which pedagogical practices bring harmony and productivity to the language class? Here we will go deep in pedagogical practices that foster community building, student engagement, and language ownership. Check a post about one technique. 

Play in Affective Language Learning: language learning is playing with ideas, words, and sounds. In a playful environment we will experience how different play types can be incorporated in language learning to promote creativity, freedom, and language ownership. Check a post about play. 

Proactive Discipline Management: discipline management can be seen as a chess game instead of a tug of war when issues are seen through a different paradigm. In this session we will explore how ecological factors, antecedents strategies, and behavioral approaches can prevent a great number of indiscipline problems from happening. Check a post about it. 

Affective Family Involvement: in this session we will explore how different communication channels can build parent awareness and engagement in participating and recognizing their children’s development. Check a post about it. 

Relaxing, Warm ups, and Wrap ups: here we will learn over a 100 hundred short activities that relax, concentrate, and energize young learners in different moments of the class. Check a post about it. Check a post about it. 

 Affective Resources for Language Learning: here we will explore, practice, and create how cards, rods, pictures, games, and jazz chants can be used affectively with young learners. Check a post about it. 

Storytelling and Affective Language Learning: here we will experience, discuss, and practice how  stories can be lived affectively and effectively to promote language learning with young learners. Check a post about it.   

Puppeteering and Affective Language Learning: puppets allow students to use, create, experience language in different realities. The spontaneity, creativity, and pride lived in the process boost student motivation and language learning. In this session we will build your own puppets, practice manipulative techniques, and explore a great number of ways in which puppets can be invited to class. Check a post about it. 

Methodology:  I believe that the more we get to know each other and I get to know the group, the better the dynamics of the certificate will be. In order to get to know your school’s needs I usually send a questionnaire and then have a follow up Skype talk to close content and process details. In order to maximize discussion time, relevant texts and videos are sent together with some questions for participants to come ready to think, discuss, and create new educational possibilities for their setting (flipped learning). Sessions are designed in a way that participants can experience both content and process (loop input) and attention is brought to the different steps that we are living together.

 Check my global calendar to check if I will be anytime soon in your area!  

Meet your Affective Language Learning Educator! 

Juan Uribe is a teacher trainer, storyteller, and puppeteer, who has been involved with affective language learning since 1994. He founded a language school in São Paulo, Brazil, where children learn English affectively through stories, games, projects, and lots of play.

Juan has a Bachelors degree in Pedagogy from the Catholic University in São Paulo, a Masters in Education in Human Development and Applied Psychology from OISE at the University of Toronto, and an MBA from Insper São Paulo. 

Visit my profile to learn more about my trajectory as an Affective Language Learning Educator!

Read testimonials about courses that I have given. 

Dreaming about Language Learning with Playmobil

I just could not resist getting the school playmobil set on sale last week. I felt I simply needed to have it, can not explain why. Yes, I bought myself Playmobil for Christmas, as my wife refused to buy playmobil to her 38-year old husband, despite my childish persistence. 

Pure delight was little to express my feelings and gratitude when I unwrapped my big Christmas package and saw that my Santa wife had given me an even bigger playmobil puppet theater set with its own carry case! What a treat!

I am probably not the only adult out there who collects and sometimes plays with childhood toys. Every collector has his or her own very special reasons for having their own private treasure. Here I share why Playmobil is dear and near to my heart and how it is part and parcel of my affective language learning world. 

Playmobil brings me very good memories. Memories of times in which I lived my creativity in an exciting and sheltered environment when I played on my own, with my sister, and with a few close friends. As a child, I particularly liked playing on my own making mountains, sacred caves, and deadly cliffs with sheets, blankets, and a chair. I also remember getting domino pieces and incorporating these in the play by making new vehicles, traps, and pyramids. In this very intimate playing of my own, I lived, relived, and experimented with language in a myriad of social roles, situations, and outcomes. More than using their voices, I became the characters and felt their unique emotions and perspectives. 

I was probably 8 or 9 when I had the unusual dream of having an English teacher coming to my bedroom, sitting on the floor, and playing with me and my playmobil in English. My wish was learning in English this very rich language of my own play, in which my hands, head, and heart were totally immersed in. Not only did I want to learn the language, but I also felt the urge to play with it, by saying it soft and loud, whispering it in many ways, and shouting it with funny voices over and over. In this language play dream, I wished I could savour the characters and their lives through the words of a new foreign language.

In hindsight, I can say that during play I must have lived what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls the experience of flow, which is considered to be the  ultimate experience in harnessing emotions to perform and learn. In flow, one is fully immersed, involved, and focused in the activity, through which our motivation and enjoyment reach their peak, making us even lose track of time and our surroundings due to the sheer excitement, increased concentration, and intrinsic pleasure. I think that these early flow experiences with my playmobil certainly contributed to my later interest in connecting young learners' interests, emotions, and play to language learning.

I was aware of this childhood dream, talked about it when asked about the beginning of my work, and considered a neat memory. That was until the day I saw myself on the floor with Felipe, a very talented 6-year old student, playing with his pirate playmobil. In our learning play, I responded to his linguistic demand by giving him the words he needed to express himself and the characters in English. I marvelled at his ability and creativity in inserting the new words in his sentences and how he was living his real language at that precise moment.  There sitting on the floor of Felipe's bedroom, it all came to me in one powerful insight. I was fullfiling a childhood dream.

But what do we do when we notice we are living a dream? Well, I enjoyed for some good 20 minutes and then I told young Felipe about how I wished that would have happened to me as a kid. By sharing it, I was able to include him in that delicious moment I was savoring.

I'm fortunate to be able to relive all these moments and make sense of my path as a player, student, teacher, and dreamer. For now, I’m preparing and saving my collection for my future children and grandchildren to play their dreams.

Well, I guess that’s why I like playmobil so much.

What about you?
Do you have childhood play experiences that have influenced your beliefs and your teaching?


Send you a frog-hug,

Juan


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Buddy The Frog goes trick or treating!

What a scary night!

Buddy had a lot of fun trick or treating. 

WARNING: this video is only for the very courageous ones!

Frugs,


Juan

Buddy The Frog tells Halloween Jokes!

Today is Halloween!
Buddy is really happy about his new costume and he'd like to tell you 5 spooky jokes.

Happy Halloween!


Spooky hugs,

Juan

A passion ( or maybe an obsession) for frogs

                                   

I have collected frogs for more than 10 years. My collection has more than 200 frogs and toads of all imaginable textures, types, sizes, and prices that were proudly acquired in this last decade. It got to a point that my wife lets me get only one frog every time we travel, although I usually get a couple. The very funny thing is that I suddenly started collecting frogs without really knowing why I was doing it. I just liked them and never bothered to think why I was doing it. 

Until one day: Shazam! I remembered that as a child I used to spend long rainy summers with my family on the beach of Ubatuba, on the coast of Brazil.  There I lived a ritual that marked me deeply: at night whenever my dad drove, he would turn off the car and its lights on this dark muddy road, and my dad, mom, sister Sosô, and I  would stay in silence listening to a beautiful symphony of frogs and toads.  I have no idea how long we were there, probably ten minutes every time, but these were truly magic moments for me as a child. 

Now I can say that I was involved in contemplation at a young age, developing an early sense of curiosity, awe, and reverence for nature.

Buddy is definitely the puppet I like the most. I have taken him to many, many classes with students and he has played games, read books, and lived several adventures with the kids and me. 

After my wedding, to the despair of my wife Analu, Buddy started travelling with me, with us, and I, we started making short movies with him to show children interesting places around the world. 

You can see some of his adventures here. 

Then it was not by chance, that I started a tradition of giving one frog to every new student that joins the school and also at the beginning of every semester wishing students a great time at school. When I give it to students, I tell them about my froggy magic moments and I explain that frogs symbolize friendship, transformation, curiosity, family, and awe.

 I did not see it coming, but after a while students started giving me frogs too, which has made me very happy!

In 2009 I went to Japan with the mission of visiting six different language schools in order to see how English was learned on the other side of the planet. To my surprise in the very first school I visited in Tokyo, the kindergarten class had a real frog as their class pet. I could not believe my eyes, specially when feeding it with three crickets was part of their routine.  Students liked the frog a lot and they were taught to moist their hands before holding it. In contrast, most students in Brazil would see the frog as very icky!

Well, as you can see this frog story goes on...

Some years ago I bought myself a frog costume, which I use in special occasions at school, such as the flea market, beginning or end of the semester. 

I have it here with me in Canada and I am looking forward to using it again. Better not ask my wife what she thinks about it...

As you can see, this frog condition of mine has become more serious recently as I have started creating words with frogs to use with the students, their parents, everybody at school, and my internet friends. 

The first one was frug, which is a frog-hug. 

Then there was friss, which is a frog-kiss. 

And I will tell you a secret, if you promise not to tell. 

Inside the word friend, there is a frog!

Tell me if this is a passion or an obsession.

Frugs to you!

Juan

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The art of puppets!

Last year I prepared a compilation of more than 35 puppets that teachers can make with their students.

Here I share the slides I used in my presentation at school. I had a great time preparing it and had lots of discoveries. Hope you have a great time exploring the different kinds too!

The art of puppets from jaluribe.

Feel free to make me any questions! I'll be glad to answer them.

Frugs,

Juan

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Check here different way you can use puppets in your class. 

Puppeteering tips for young learners!

It's with great pleasure that I share here my first videopost!
For it I chose one of my favourite themes: Puppeteering.
Preparing, filming, and editing weren't that hard. Enjoy it!

Here you will find:

How to hold a puppet
Bringing a puppet to life
Introducing a puppet to students
Things puppets do
The triangle technique
More ways to use puppets in class
Buddy's favorite

Check also these other hints I have written about using puppets.
Here I have a video with 32 different puppets you can make!

All the best from Toronto,

Juan

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