Outdoor Language Classes In the Park: Why We Do What We Do Where We Do It

Attaining Flow, Passing the Funness Quotient, And Being Flexible

Every weekday at 4 pm, rain or shine, we give a free English class near the church in the park. This has been tradition since I arrived here in 2015.

Today, as happens several times a week, someone asked us if we wanted to use their space to host the classes. Seems nice enough. But while there are some drawbacks, there are also very good reasons to do it publicly in the open air (‘aire libre’).

Even when I run other foreigners through the ACASpanish.com program, I prefer most of the classes to be outside and/or even out walking around. What gives?

To better understand the why, we’ve got to cover the what.

What are the games and activities we do with the kids outside and why do we do them and not others more conducive to traditional academic environments?

Teaching free classes in the park has certain challenges a nerd teacher like me has come to love.  The challenge is providing a state of ‘flow’, keeping the ‘funness quotient’ high, and allowing for a lot of flexibility.

Enter the Flow Zone – Attaining A State of Flow

While perhaps already having been acknowledged in many Eastern philosophies, the state of Flow was first expressed to me by the author Mihály Csíkszentmihályi.  The idea is to avoid anxiety and boredom, by balancing your ability with the difficult of the task.

You know when you are in ‘flow mode’ when your work doesn’t feel like work.  When you are enjoying what you are doing and the time seems to fly.

Individual Flow vs. Group Flow

It is one thing to attain a state of flow on your own – ever browsed the Internet for too long, looking up from your screen only to realize hours have past?  You were flowing but maybe it wasn’t really that ‘productive’.

Now imagine a group of 15-20 ten year old kids running around outside.  How do you ensure they are in the proper ‘flow’ state while still actually learning?  How does classroom management work in such a hectic setting?

The games themselves unite the students.  You need to consistently know when to isolate an individual and when to appeal to the group as a whole.  Group cohesion is a necessary ingredient of each class: games work great at this and singing works even better.

Singing with Flow: Not Just For Pronunciation Practice

Daily at least 2 to 4 activities have singing involved in them in some fashion, whether it is at the end of the activity, a single action within a game, or the entireity of it.

Singing is great for pronunciation practice.  I notice many of my students having a much easier time pronouncing certain words and/or phrases when singing than when speaking.  But it also brings the group together as a whole.

Things can be chaotic, but when I finally start up with the opening lines of “Hello, Hello, Hello, How Are You?” everyone joins in and the group is whole again.

So by taking “flow” into consideration, we need to balance the unique ability of each student as well as the difficulty of the activity.  Furthermore, the cohesivity of the group as a whole must always be reinforced.  You can’t change the student, so the game needs to be flexible enough to be catered to on the fly.

The Funness Quotient and Total Physical Response

These classes are for kids.  And if the games and activities aren’t fun enough – the kids simply leave.  Thats fine and thats how it should be.  Another reason we like classes in public: kids can come and go as they please.  Their attention is earned not forced.

Total Physical Response is a second language acquisition theory that basically attempts to link physicality with new mental linguistic concepts.

Total Physical Response is an extremely popular alternative to many of the more traditional (and, in my opinion, much less effective) second language acquisition methods.  It (along with other schools of thought) make up the ACA Method.

Play a game with lots of repetition that allow for a lot of specific pronunciation practice.  The games should be physical so as to further cement links between the action and the word or phrase.

So we play the same games, we allow the students to play as teachers (acting out), and we isolate students occasionally to work on their pronunciation individually thus allowing for the difficulty levels to be scaled as needed. 

Singing wraps all of that in a nice, neat little package.

Funness quotient?   The classes have to be interesting and fun to both complete beginners as well as seasoned veterans (we still have some students that I first met in 2015).  The kids scream and shout to play the games they want and never want the class to end.  Check!

The What – The Activites That Make The Cut

After several years of teaching like this, I’ve tried a lot of different english-related games and activities and certain ones have stuck.

The activities have needed to be flexible enough to:

• Not get boring (FLOW state)
• Not get too difficult (FLOW state)
• Allow for any student to waltz in and out as they please,
• allow for a class of completely different ability levels (including those with special needs),
• as well as be able to be quickly written and understood using only a whiteboard
• And most importantly: Actually be useful in a Total Physical Response (TPR) sense in terms of effectively teaching English week in and week out.

And we need to do that on the fly with nothing planned and without even necessarily knowing anyones ability beforehand.  See the inherent (and irresistible) challenge behind this?

And The Activities?

So what are the activities that have stood the test of time and continue to be successful?  Stay tuned for part 2 where I flesh them out in more detail!