S . ESL Teaching

Great game to check the newly learned or revise old vocabulary: Show a flashcard. The kids have to tell you what they see. If it's correct, the monkey climbs up the tree (1 spot), if it's wrong, he falls down (either completely or just 1 spot - depending on how well the kids already know the words). The goal is to get the monkey to the top of the tree and eat some bananas. The kids absolutely love this game. Especially when you make funny noises while moving the monkey or let him fall down.

I played this game with a group of kids yesterday and they totally loved it. All you need is a die, blank paper and pencils. We did it with the snowman topic, but it can be played with other topics as well. The goal of the game is that the children should draw a complete snowman. BUT it's not that easy. They have to role the die and are only allowed to draw one part at a time. For example nk emotico They have to role the die and are only allowed to draw one part at a time. For example 1 = body 1= head     2 = eyes     3 = nose     4 = mouth     5 = arms     6 = hat Now one child throws the die and lands on 3, so the child is allowed to draw a nose (even though nothing else is on the paper yet, not even the body). Next time the child throws the die again and it lands on 5, it's allowed to draw the arms. If it lands again on a 3 - no drawing. The child who is able to finish his or her snowman first, wins. There can be some pretty funn...

A game you can play using this song ...  Have the kids sitting in a circle and close their eyes. (Prepare a biiig cookie, that you can reuse all the time, maybe using salt dough or just a paper cookie), walk behind the kids, sing a song together, drop the cookie behind one of the children without them noticing and sit down with them. Start the nursery rhyme using the real names of the kids instead of the animals. Each time a name is mentioned this child has to look behind them and then say "Not me"  or "Yes I have the cookie, mniam mniam mniam."

Let's start a new fun category - GAME TIMEEEE!!! Every now and then I'll post a game you can play in your classroom that are classroom proven! Since it's getting cold and the winter topic is coming closer, I would like to introduce you to a game that's one of the favorites in my classroom at this time of the year. Preteach: You preteach winter clothes; jacket, pullover, boots, scarf, gloves, beanie .. whatever you feel you need to teach the kids. For very small children you might just want to pick 2 or 3 things. Prep: For this game you ask the parents  to bring all those things along. Now for the game you put all the clothes on one side of the classroom. Make sure they are all mixed up and all over the place, so that nothing is neatly put together. The students stand on the opposite side of the room. How to play: You ask them to "Put on the scarf (or any other object)", give a signal and the kids have to run to the other side, find the right object, put it o...

Now there are literally hundreds of games out there that you can play when teaching colors. Here are 3 of my favorites: 1. Coloring Prepare crayons (several of each color) and place them on a table. Hang coloring pictures on the wall everywhere in the room. Say the name of a student and a color. The student has to run to the table, take the color and choose a picture to color. He or she colors a part (one part only!) and sits down again. To not have the other students waiting and to make things more fun, call many names quickly after another with different colors or with the same color). You can also allow the students to be more creative and add things to the picture. Once finished, look at what the coloring pictures look like after the game. There may be some pretty wild combinations. 2. Tapping Place a few flashcards on the floor (or table). Have the students sit around the cards. Tap on one card and say its color (eg “blue”). The next student has to tap your card a...

So introducing new vocabulary with flashcards can be great fun and there are tons of games to play with flashcards. But as I said before, it can get quite boring if you always do the same stuff. I bought those little farm animals (nothing fancy) and introduced them to the kids. Having a surprise box is a lot more exciting than just placing the animals in front of their noses right away and telling them "This is a cow".  Make it a bit mysterious and take out one animal at a time and wonder what this is and what sound it makes. joke around and show a cow, but make a pig sound, for example. and then have the children correct your sound. A game I love to play is to put all the animals in a bag. One child gets blindfolded and takes an animal from the bag. He/She then has to feel the animal and guess which one it is without peeking. If the child can't guess it or guesses it wrong, the other children are allowed give some hints, but not say what animal it is. The kids al...

Teaching with flashcards is my favorite way to teach new vocab. You should see the shoeboxes full of flashcards on my shelf! Whenever my husband comes into the office he points to my boxes and asks: “We throw them? We need more space!” :p. Don’t touch my boxes! Anyway, even if flashcards are a great way to teach new vocabublary, do yourself and your students a favor, and switch from time to time. Teaching with flashcards all the time can get anyone bored out of their skin. I also use realia (real objects) or ppt presentations, for example, but there are tons of other ways. But let’s get back to the flashcards. How I usually introduce the new words is by showing a flashcard, saying the word and have the kids repeat (yea, that’s the boring part .. but not for long). The same again with the second word. Once I have 2 words, the fun can begin.  I stick the cards to the board (the 2 that I taught so far), pointing to one card and saying the word, then pointing ...

Chainez is an ESL teacher from France with 5 years experience. The youngest children she has taught were 3 years old. Read what she has to say … 1. Tell me about the teacher who has influenced your life the most and what made him/her different from all the others? I have always  been impressed by my teachers, most of the time in a positive way, but I have to mention one:  I remember  my  physics teacher who was efficient, nice and respectful towards us. That’s what made her different from my previous teachers. 2.When you first started teaching small children, what did you find the most challenging and how did you deal with it? The most challenging  thing was to keep them interested in the lesson all along the lesson. Then, I found out that it was important to prepare different activities  in advance  and only use   some of them   according to their interactions and mood. 3.What do you find the most rewarding asp...

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...