Teaching English to Very Young Learners: meeting the challenge and having lots of fun by Teacher Michele micheles@yazigi.com
Introductions Brainstorming Preschool Areas Realia, Resources, and so on Play and Games Songs, Chants and Nursery Rhymes Storytelling Drama and Role-play Projects Portfolios
What do you like about teaching kids? What do you dislike about teaching kids?
Preschool Areas Language Nature and Society Math Arts Music Bodily-kinesthetic Area
Realia, Resources and so on List as many resources and realia as you can and think about how you can make use of them while teaching kids.
Play and Games Why Play and Games? Kinds of Play Kinds of Games
Why are play and games so important for kids? - They have a great importance in the lives of children as they broaden kids awareness of themselves and the world; - Children try to find meaning in their routine through games and play; - Children explore their world and experience new things through play and games; - They involve children as a whole which nurtures children s development and learning process; - They are motivating, enjoyable, stimulating and fun; - Kids develop their large and small motor skills through play and games; - Children become aware of their body, that is, of all their body can do and start being able to control it;
- Games help kids develop social, cognitive, affective, thinking and communication skills (kids imitate people around them, they interact with other kids, they get closer to other people around them through games and play creating bonds); - As kids talk while playing, they are able to better understand what they are doing (actions and language are closely related); - When kids play, they exchange ideas, negotiate and take decisions together; - As kids grow older the way they play gets closer to reality, thus kids start understanding all different aspects of our society; - Play and games stimulate children s curiosity, creativity, and imagination. They help children s brain s capacity to grow and boost their development; - Kids become aware of rules through games and play; - They enhance concentration and attention skills (little by little kids can have a longer attention span by playing);
- They make kids develop spatial concepts and understanding; - Kids also develop coordination and are able to strengthen their muscles; - Kids themselves, parents and teachers can find them anywhere, anything at all can become a game and/or play; - They are a relaxation of classroom atmosphere; - They stimulate language skills and develop vocabulary; - Teachers can check if kids are developing properly by observing kids play; - Teachers can question kids while they are playing in order to make them reason more about what they are doing.
Kinds of Play Social play Object play Symbolic play Sensorimotor Play Practice Play Constructive Play Games
Kinds of Games Pre-game rhymes Jump rope rhymes Clapping rhymes/games Ball games Chasing games Circle games Mind games Paper pencil games More games
Songs and Chants Why Songs and Chants? Bank of Ideas: Before you start When listening Follow-up activities
Why Songs? - Songs are a wonderful tool for practicing intonation, pronunciation, stress and language patterns, sounds and the rhythm of English; - Children can imitate and remember language better from a song as they have a special meaning to them; - Music always creates a sense of belonging and pleasure; - Songs appeal to the ear as one listens to oneself while singing; - Words in a song are rich, colorful and repetitive. Thus, they help kids expand their knowledge of the target language; - They motivate kids to want to learn more and more as they have a variety of rhythms and instrumentation; - Young children improve their listening and pronunciation skills and their oral production in an interactive way;
- Kids also need to have established routines. Use songs in order to make them feel more secure and to lower their affective filter; - Songs help them acquire and internalize the vocabulary which is being dealt with at that specific moment; - Most songs provide kids with natural pleasant moments similar to the ones in which their mother tongue is learnt; - They make shy or even weaker students join in and become more confident; - Some songs teach learners about the culture of English speaking countries; - Kids develop their large motor skills through action songs; - They develop kid s musical intelligence and their auditory learning style; - They promote social interaction and enhance kids selfesteem; - They help kids develop other cognitive areas such as Math, logical reasoning and reading comprehension.
Bank of Ideas Before You Start Set the mood and contextualize it: by telling them either a story related to the song or one that is the song itself; Use visual aids so that students can try to guess and understand what the song is all about; Work on specific vocabulary and structures they will be listening to.
When Listening Use TPR actions, mimicry, facial expressions, gestures which will help convey meaning to it; Make them sing the song with you in different ways, that is, changing tone of voice and making them sing it in rounds; Provide all kids with musical instruments and make them play while you all sing it; Make them perform a sort of dialogue while singing, that is, assigning each student or group of students a role, make sure that they listen to each other and respond appropriately; Let them just hum or dance to the song freely for a while giving them some time to get familiar with it; Use realia; Have them repeat each verse separately and several times; Ask them to draw words they are familiar with and/or the story of the song.
Follow-up Activities Having talent shows and concerts; Creating a video clip; Having karaoke sessions in class; Keeping record of the lyrics: by creating a worksheet in which learners can work on by coloring, gluing pictures, etc.; Playing different games with words, expressions, etc. from the song: guessing game, memory game, bingo, miming the actions, drawing dictation, Chinese whispers with sentences, words, expressions from the song, board games, action games, miss the word: stop singing at a specific part and they have to call out the missing word/part, clapping hands whenever they listen to a specific word instead of singing it; Creating crafts (pop-ups, puppets, etc.);
Creating posters to hang out in their classroom to display the lyrics; Creating their own songs changing the lyrics; Getting sentences they usually say and creating their own chants and songs; Having kids hold pictures of words taken from the song. Then, they must stand up or sit down every time they listen to it; Dice game: before playing it, some lines should be made either with chalk or scotch tape on the floor all over the room. Then, all kids get a tag with a picture and stick it to their chests. Then, a dice, which contains the same pictures kids have on their tags, is rolled. They move a line whenever their picture faces up.
Nursery Rhymes Why Nursery Rhymes? Bank of Ideas Follow-up Activities
Why Rhymes? - They are interesting, repetitious, easy to remember and short; - They help children learn new words and routines; - Many nursery rhymes contain common word families; - We can learn to recite long before we can write and read; - Hearing the sound of familiar voices singing, humming and chanting will give the child confidence and they will join in; - Children will gain a great deal of information about language such as spoken language patterns through rhymes.
Bank of Ideas RHYME: 1, 2, buckle my shoe 1, 2 buckle my shoe 3, 4 open the door 5, 6 pick up sticks 7, 8 take this plate 9, 10 say it again Fill a bag with a shoe, a plate and some wood sticks and tie it. Give the bag to students and ask them to take turns touching it and trying to guess what is inside. Listen to their guesses, open the bag and introduce vocabulary. Ask them to try to find a number that rhymes with each word. Recite the nursery rhyme.
RHYME: Bubbles I love bubbles in my bath I love bubbles in my sink But the bubbles I love the best Are the bubbles in my drink Bring a bubble blower and ask students to try to blow them. Also ask students to count how many bubbles their classmates can blow. Ask them where we can make bubbles (sink, bath, drink, etc.). Poll where they would rather have bubbles. Note down on the board. Recite the nursery rhyme. Do some Bubble Art: add a little food coloring or paint to bubble mix. Make kids blow some bubbles. Have them catch the bubbles on a piece of paper to create bubble art.
RHYME: Potato 1 potato, 2 potatoes, 3 potatoes, four 5 potatoes, 6 potatoes, 7 potatoes, more Say the rhyme and teach them how to play it. Children stand in a circle and hold out their hands in a fist. One begins reciting it while gently tapping each fist. When the leader needs to tap one s own fist, he/she taps it on the mouth. When they get to four and more, the fist tapped must be put behind his/her back. Keep repeating the rhyme over and over until one fist is left. Ask them to get in pairs and try to do it. First, say it and have students repeat up to the moment they can do it by themselves.
Follow-up Activities - Bingo: give them a blank bingo card and ask them to choose any of the verses worked on and draw them on the boxes, after they ve done that, the teacher says the verses and they must check the ones they have; - Karaoke; - Recording them saying the rhymes and recording a CD. - Having all rhymes worked on collected and making a book.
Storytelling Why Stories? Reading or Telling Stories? Bank of Ideas: Before you start When telling Follow-up activities
Why Stories? - They have a great importance in the lives of children as they help them understand their world and themselves; - Children try to find meaning in them; - They are non-expensive and easy to get; - They are a relaxation of classroom atmosphere; - They involve children as a whole which nurtures the learning process; - They help creating rapport by creating a sense of belonging; - They are motivating and enjoyable;
- They help develop fluency in the 4 skills; - They help children get acquainted with the language; - They re a stimulus for speaking and writing; - Children learn to listen through stories and thus to communicate; - They stimulate children s imagination thus generating language; - They are an effective tool to make children learn how to sequence and organize their ideas; - Through telling stories, teachers help them become avid readers; - Something happens all the time. Every step in each story is an event. Thus, they keep kids enthralled.
Before you start - Get your students as close as possible in a way you see them all; - Don t begin until every kid is paying attention and feeling comfortable; - Try to find some other way to help children understand something special is going to happen, for instance, use a rug, a magic bag, etc.; - Set the mood and create a positive atmosphere; - Select stories full of action, familiar images and repetition; - Create a story corner in the classroom where stories are read or told by both students and teachers.
When Telling - A story should be told in a logical sequence; - Tell it dramatically. Make use of your voice, body, face and realia to hold their attention. If relevant, use simple sound effects; - Never break the magic atmosphere. You may interrupt to allow for comments either yours or the kids ; - Involve the children; - Tell it simply, directly and naturally. Bear in mind pace and pause; - Use short, familiar, vivid, onomatopoeic words. Besides, use vocabulary based on visual aspects of the tale; - Keep in mind there is no need to speak loud.
Follow-up Activities - Imagining: read a picture book out loud to students whose eyes are closed. Without showing them the book s illustrations, discuss the pictures students visualized in their imagination. Then, compare and discuss the illustrator s vision of the story as the book s pictures are shown; - Creating a movie box; - Shadow play; - Puppets and finger-puppets; - Memory game: show the children four to eight pictures or objects. Then, hide them and challenge the children to remember what they are and what they look like. You might also remove one of the pictures and ask which one is missing; - Characters dominoes; - Repeating it if it s true: show an object or a picture. Make a statement about it. If it is true, the children should repeat it; - Acting it out;
- Finding the odd one out; - Singing a song; - Cooking; - Guessing the objects: wrap up objects related to the story. Get children to guess what they might be. Then, tell them they will be in the story and they can ask questions about the relation between the objects and the story; Muddled pictures: ask the children to try to sequence the pictures in the order they think the story will be in. They listen and check; - Jumping up word card or pictures: they jump on them when they listen to theirs; - True or false: children raise hands when they hear a mistake; - Stepping stone pictures: arrange the pictures on the floor on a line and challenge the learners to walk from picture to picture to retell the story; - Making a video and/or a Big Book; - When retelling, leave bits out, encouraging oral production and checking listening comprehension.
Drama and Role-play
Projects Warm-ups Development Phase Wrap-ups
Portfolios Why? When? How? What?
Children don t care how much you know until they know how much you care!