Who are the Henry Brothers? Our biography – from poetry jam to kamishibai man.

“Anything given by the Henry Brothers tends to have a high level of interactivity. ..I think (they) are often hired for that entertainment level more than anything. They are a good pair to kick off or end a conference with, that’s for sure” – The Turkish TEFL Blog, 2010.

John Henry Moorcroft and Paul Henry Zarraga are English teachers involved in ELT publishing in Turkey, currently working for ITI and for Dunya Education, and also touring the country giving workshops and presentations to English teachers, mainly on the use of poetry, storytelling and other lively activities for the language classroom.

In the words of David Dodgson from Ankara, Turkey: “Oh, and we also had the Henry Brothers doing a ‘stand-up’ (as in the comedy style rather than making everyone get up – althought they did that too ) plenary. ……. it was great for adding a lighter touch to an intense day of talks!”

More background…………

John has been an English teacher since the 1980s, including a period as writing and speaking co-ordinator of the English language prep program at Istanbul Technical University and as a CELTA trainer at ITI in Istanbul. For many years he has worked in ELT publishing, giving workshops to English teachers.

In 2001 he was joined in this by Paul, also an English teacher, also from Britain,and having realised that they both had the same middle name, Henry, they came up with the name they use today. Paul is now Education Director of Dunya Education, distributors of Macmillan Education in Turkey.

The Henry Brothers, as well as their work in ELT publishing, teaching, and teacher training, have given conference plenaries and workshops on topics including non-verbal communication, critical thinking, poetry in the classroom, storytelling, using interactive whiteboards, writing skills, using graded readers, using dictionaries, and many more.

Some of the things we do are our interpretations of poems and stories from other sources (such as Michael Rosen’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, or John Foster’s poem Football Story), some are traditional ballads and folk tales, and some we wrote ourselves. It’s a rich mixture and it’s all performed in our unique high-energy style. We’re sure that in a Henry Brothers presentation you’ll find material to use in the classroom on Monday morning, and you’ll have a good time to boot.

All in all the Henry Brothers performances are still the best part of our working lives and we’re really pleased that they remain popular with teachers all around Turkey.

As well as giving conference plenaries, workshops and demonstrations of activities from teaching materials they have been known to travel in disguise……

Our most performed workshops have been………
* Do They Really Speak Like That? – activities for raising students’ awareness of features of spoken English such as intonation, ellipsis, and discourse markers, including some routines that have become staples of our talks ever since; Three Stages of Marriage, How to Get Off a Dolmuş, and the Mbele Feasting Song.

* The Henry Brothers Poetry Jam – where you write and perform your own poetry to rubrics that they provide, and you get to fall in love with David Beckham, walk in the dark, dark wood and go on a bear hunt.
* Stand to Reason: critical thinking activities – this is a rich selection of games and puzzles including Grey Elephants from Denmark, the Safety at Work Awards, and The Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly.
* Bridging the Language Gap – a focus on communication as whole including body language, pronunciation, spelling and punctuation through activities such as the Henry Brothers Maori Haka, the Antalya policeman (who can give complex directions using only the word ‘yes’), Tongue Twisters, and the now-famous Pung Chu, (punctuation Kung Fu) routine.

* Kamishibai Man – storytelling activies for the language classroom. Kamishibai means ‘paper theatre’ in Japanese and is part of a long tradition of storytelling with pictures. We bring Kamishibai to the ELT conference arena along with a range of other storytelling activities.

Over the years our look has evolved; the Italian-looking Enrico Brothers…

….as we began doing workshops on body language and non-verbal communication, morphed into mime artist/clowns.

And here we are also as D’Artagnan Du Grammar and the Four Musketeers, in a sketch that we wrote and performed with the English teachers of Kultur Koleji to open a conference entitled “Grammar vs the Four Skills”.

In 2010 we added to our repertoire by working with professional magician Doruk Ülgen on a series of workshops drawing parallels between the professions of magician and teacher.

We can be contacted by e-mail to istanbul@cambridge.org, @istanbuljm on twitter or Henry Brothers on Facebook. Also join Cambridge English on Facebook for news of our work and appearances around Turkey.