Introduction. As the saying goes, all is well that ends well. And it is true, isn’t it? No matter what we’ve been through, what really counts is how we feel at the end.

That ends are important and that HAPPY ENDS are what everybody hopes for is beyond any doubt. However, for the purposes of this particular workshop, we’ll put a special emphasis on starts, on HAPPY STARTS. To be more precise, we’ll think and talk about happy starts of a school year, a semester or a lesson.

The context. Why bother about happy starts, you might ask, when we are at the very end of the academic year and this is enough to make us happy? Well, for a very simple reason – we firmly believe that what starts well has a much better chance to end well. Naturally, a good, effective start is not sufficient to guarantee a good result at the end, but it can have a very positive impact on the students and is definitely worth trying. Besides, what may now seem like a long summer vacation ahead of us will be over in no time and we’ll find ourselves back in the auditoriums facing our students. So we suggest that we spare some time now and prepare for the moment when we’ll have to GET STARTED again. It might save some false starts or ill-chosen activities for the first after-summer school weeks.

There is also another thing we should be aware of if we want to yield maximum results from our students’ participation in the learning process. Most of us will have noticed the fall in the students’ enthusiasm and willingness to work during the second semester as compared to the first one. The causes for this might be various – tiredness, inertia, peer pressure, etc. But it does make sense to get them involved as much as possible and get them work as hard as possible while they are still fresh and willing to do so after the summer. Bet on a dynamic start, make the most of the very first lessons to get them in a working mode, and you will find that the right start is a very important step towards the right end.

The workshop. What follows is an outline of the things the participants did and a list of activities that were described, demonstrated and discussed during the workshop.

Their ideas, which were jotted down on the board as they were stated, included the following:

• The teacher feels anxious (especially if she/he is not very experienced);
• The teacher does not know the students’ names;
• The teacher does not know the students’ learning habits/ styles;
• The students do not know each other’s names (or anything about each other if they are first year, first semester students);
• The students are still in a ‘summer mood’ (overexcited, talkative) and do not feel like working yet;
• The previous teacher of the group was and still is very popular with the students (hence the new teacher will have to pay special efforts to win their hearts and prove he/ she is as good or maybe even better);
• The previous teacher has done next to nothing with the group as far as English is concerned (hence the new teacher finds out their level is dramatically low);
• The students have forgotten a lot and need a lot of revising;
• The group may be rather mixed in terms of language competence (hence it might be very difficult to set appropriate tasks);
• The students do not have the coursebook they will be working with – either they do not know the title yet or they simply haven’t bothered to buy/ borrow a copy from the library or at least to photocopy the first unit.

As the participants in the workshop pointed out, most often what a teacher is faced with during a first lesson/first week is a combination of several of these problems.

Below follows a brief description of some of the activities discussed. With or without certain changes and adaptations, these might prove a useful resource for our EFL fellow teachers at NBU. For practical purposes, the suggested activities have been organised in several groups, with explicit headings.

• True/False sentences – Write several sentences about yourself on the board. Only some of them should be true. Ask the students to guess which. Then be ready to expand on the true sentences.
• Work from a clue (1) – Draw a simple picture or write a few words on the board encoding some information about you and encourage students to guess what it means.
• Work from a clue (2) – Ask students to get in pairs or small groups and write down 5 sentences they believe to be true about you. Ask them to be more adventurous than just ‘Your name is Syana Harizanova. You are an English teacher.’ Make sure you unobtrusively give them some clues, e.g. wearing a wedding ring, leaving your car keys/ a magazine you have bought/ a book you are reading/ a lighter, etc on your desk.
  
  An extra idea: It might add to the after-summer flavour of the above activities if you had a box of seashells or pebbles collected in advance to give away from for each correct answer.

• Same as above. Students do it in pairs and write in their notebooks
• Same as above. Students do it in pairs and write in their notebooks
• Same as above. Students do it in pairs and write in their notebooks
• My name, your name – Make sure students know how to spell their names in English. Ask them to think of one or more adjectives starting with the same letter or sound as their name. Later they will introduce themselves by saying their name with one of these adjectives, e.g. Daring Danche, Enigmatic Emo, Smiling Syana. Encourage them to use dictionaries to help them with positive adjectives. When everybody is ready, students start saying their names and adjectives in a chain-like way. However, each of them has first to repeat the names and adjectives of those before him/her and only then to say his/her own name.
• Birthday chart – Ask students to make a list of their names and birth dates. Then together decide who will be responsible to put this info onto a chart and distribute it among group members. If circumstances permit, you might decide to keep the chart somewhere on the wall in the classroom. Make sure when someone has a birthday the group congratulates them by, for example, singing a song, giving them a birthday card, giving them a flower or a balloon, creating a rhyme/ poem about them etc.
• Forfeits – Prepare as many cards as there are students in the class (e.g. 11) and write a number on each of them. On the opposite side write an instruction (See further below suggested instructions.) Put the cards face down and ask random students to choose a number from 1 to 11. Pick up the corresponding card and read what it says. The student does as the card says.
  Suggested instructions:
  
  Tell everyone about something you can do well/ are good at.
  Tell everyone something you would like to be able to do.
  Tell everyone where you would like to live best, and why.
  Tell everyone about something that is important to you.
  Tell everyone about a dream or ambition you have.
  Tell everyone three things about your home.
  Tell everyone three things about your family.
  Tell everyone three things you like and three things you don’t like.
  
  (If you have a bigger group and run short of ideas for card instructions, you can use the same instructions more than once. Write the instructions down on as many cards as you need. It does not matter if two or more students pick up a card that has the same question on it.)
• This is me – Ask students to write a page about themselves. They should say who they are and include any information they would like to share with the class, e.g. place of birth, members of family, favourite pastimes, things they hate doing, things they are very good at, countries they have been to, something that they would like to do in the future, etc. Collect and read the writings but do not give any feedback on them. Use this information for a communicative activity during the next lesson. (see below)
  
  Get the students in pairs or small groups in such a way that the members of the pair/ group have something in common according to the text they wrote previously, e.g they both/all have a sister/ have been to Germany/ like hip-hop etc. You do not reveal to them the grounds for grouping them in this way. Tell them that they have 5 min to find out what they share among themselves. Get feedback in plenary.
• I never lie – Dictate sentences. If the sentence is true for the student, he/she writes it down. If it is false, the student writes a related sentence changing it accordingly. Sample sentences:
  
  I remember learning to ride a bike.
  I never forget to do my homework.
  I often spend hours in front of the computer.
  I like to send my friends electronic postcards.
  I enjoy going to school.
  
  Encourage students to share in pairs and discuss.
• Interactive survey – Each student receives a sheet of paper with his/her name at the top. Below the name the student writes a question he/she would like to ask everybody in the group, e.g. Have you ever done anything outrageous/ unusual? or Why did you choose to study at NBU? etc. Each student mingles around and asks the question to the rest of the students, recording answers and names.
• Topic time – Choose any of the previous year’s topics. In groups of 4 students make up lists of words related to the topic. You can ask them to think of nouns, verbs, adjectives separately. Each word gives them a point. If they remember a whole phrase on a given topic, they get two points. This activity works best if you split students into groups of four and set a time limit, e.g. 2 min. The group with most words/ phrases is the winner
• Any topic, any chant – If you need to introduce or revise a topic, ask students to give you 4 words on this topic. Lead a chant with these words. Then ask for 4 actions to suit the words. Lead the chant with the actions + the words. Do this again with 4 new words and suitable actions. Half the class chant the first 4 words + actions, and the rest – the second 4. Below is a sample chant. If you wanted to introduce/revise the topic of ‘Success’ (or ‘Achievement’) for example, students might suggest words like career, promotion, prize, celebration and then think of suitable verbs, e.g. make, get, win, have. The chant then would sound like this:
       Make a career
       Make a career
            Get a promotion
            Get a promotion
                 Win a prize
                 Win a prize
                      Have a celebration
                      Have a celebration
  

For the first lesson after the summer holidays the topic can be exactly ‘Summer’ or ‘Holidays’. You can find an extended example further below.

• Summer Chant
  1st round:
  4 random words on the topic, e.g. money, hotel, rest, sunshine
  4 actions to go with them, e.g. spend, stay in, have, enjoy
  
  

  Chant:

  Spend some money (2) Stay in hotels (2) Have a good rest (2) Enjoy the sunshine (2)

  
  
  2nd round:
  4 more words on the topic, e.g. seaside, seagulls, ice-cream, boat
  4 actions to go with them, e.g. go, listen, have, sail
  
  

  Chant:

  Go to the seaside (2) Listen to the seagulls (2) Have some ice-cream (2) Sail in a boat (2)

  
  
  3rd round:
  4 more words on the topic, e.g. bus, trip, sights, souvenirs
  4 actions to go with them, e.g. get on, go, see, buy
  
  

  Chant:

  Get on a bus (2) Go on a trip (2) See some sights (2) Buy some souvenirs (2)

  
  
  
• Write an acrostic – Write the word SUMMER vertically on the board and ask the students, individually or in pairs, to create an acrostic. Here are two examples created by students and then ‘perfected’ with the joint efforts of the whole group (teacher included):
  
  

  Soft sand Under my feet. Morning breeze in My hair. A sea of Emotions Rising inside me.

  Sweet Unforgettable Memories Muffled voices in the Evenings Romance

  
  
  
• Find a match – Find somebody who did something that you did in summer. (Do not ask about going to the seaside!!!) Discuss in more details.
• After summer warm-up – Students write 5 sentences about something nice they did during the holiday. In pairs their partners respond with So did I or I didn’t as the case is. The same is repeated with 5 more sentences where students say about 5 nice things they (unfortunately) didn’t/ couldn’t do during the summer. This time the response will be Neither did I or I did.
  With low-level students it might prove helpful to draw a simple grid on the board like this:
  
  

So did I. :-)	I didn't :-(
Neither did I :-(	I did :-)



Explain to students that when they talk about their positive summer experiences (the first set of 5 sentences), they will be using the prompts from the first line (in red ink). If they wish, they can copy the grid in their notebooks and put ticks in the corresponding box for each answer they get. After that they will proceed in the same way with the second batch of sentences referring to the second line of the grid. In the end, students report how many coincidences they found with their partner in the way they spent the summer.

• Setting the rules – Spend some time to talk about what you might call a ‘classroom code of behaviour’ for the beginning year (semester). Dealing with latecomers, using the mother tongue, self-checking practices and other classroom procedures can be among the things you would like to discuss. Be ready to accept suggestions and recommendations from your students. Remember that once set the rules should be respected and followed by both you and your students.
• Getting to know your book – Explain how the coursebook is organized, e.g. units, modules, revision sections, wordlists, reference sections, etc. Look together at the Map of the book, comment on the topics/ grammar covered there. Finally, give the students some practical tasks, e.g.
  
  What is the listening task in the self-check section of unit 3?
  There is a reading text in Module 2 that is about a Hollywood star. Who is he/she?
  Do these for time.

Conclusion. You can’t have missed the fact that the better half of the above activities is marked by a personalization touch. This is not accidental. We believe that generally, people are more likely to be interested in communicating personal information rather than talk about the language, imitate contrived dialogues or do dry exercises in their coursebooks. What is more, it is logical to expect that if members of a group knew something about each other, it would be more likely for them to trust each other, to accept each other, to co-operate with each other. Promoting this kind of openness and well-meaning right from the very start of a course can lead to higher motivation and bigger involvement on the part of the students and can provide an environment for meaningful language practice throughout the whole course.

To put it very short, START WITH THE END IN MIND and see if you and your students end up happier!

Хадфийлд 1995: J. Hadfield. Classroom Dynamics. Oxford University Press
Бейкър и Ринволукри 2005: J. Baker, M. Rinvolucri. Unlocking Self-expression, Delta Publishing
Хийтфийлд 2005: D. Heathfield. Spontaneous Speaking, Delta Publishing списание „Инглиш Тийчинг пръфешънъл”: English Teaching professional magazine (various issues)