S . ESL Teaching

We often think that greeting is something that the children do automatically, when they enter the classroom.  But this is not necessarily the case, especially when you are teaching very small children.  You will find kids that might just walk past you, as if you are not even there, staring blankly and running towards the toys they want to get to as soon as they can (who wouldn’t run to the cool stuff!!). If you are lucky, you will see some children smile at you. If you are very lucky they may say good morning. And if you are very very lucky, they may even shake your hand, look you in the eyes and say good morning. But those are usually very few (ok, reeeaaalllyy few). So it is on you to teach them. First of all, you should always stand in the door and greet the children with a big smile on your face.  Don’t do the mistake being busy with something in the classroom, preparing some last minute things  and waiting for everybody to come in and sit down. Help th...

Kids love lapbooks and we always have a lot of fun making them. It does take some time and preparation though and you might want to have a couple of things ready (like cutting things out, because it can take a lot of time for a child). Here is an example of a lapbook I made about "the farm" (slightly different from the video you see above, but just to give you an idea on how it can be used): The front (different kinds of crafting paper, glitter glue and stickers) This is what you see, when you open the "door of the barn": -Guessing game on the left (description of an animal, then open the flap to check and color), - Touchy feely part on the right, - In the middle a dot-to-dot activity booklet, a memory game with farm animals in the envelop and a minibook with a story to read and color. Underneath the big flap you find a coloring activity, a poem and a picture with mini-animals in the envelop. The kids have to read the text a...

The very hungry caterpillar munches its way through apples, cheese, oranges, cherry pies and salami slices, growing bigger and bigger...

One of my favorite teaching materials is "Flashcards", because there are just sooo many games you can play with them and make lessons really fun. Here are some ideas that came to my mind just now, but there are tons more out there. 1. Have the children close their eyes. Hide the flashcards everywhere in the room. Depending on the age of the children you can also just place the cards openly into different corners of the room. Have the children open their eyes. Call out a card. The children run to find the correct one. The child who finds it first receives a point. Repeat until no cards are left. 2. Another version of this is .. use big flashcards (DinA4) and pin them to the wall. Call out a card and have the children run to the correct card tapping it. Those who tapped the right card get a point. 3. Pin all flashcards to the board. Drill the vocabulary. Have the children close their eyes and remove one card. The children then have to guess which one is mis...