You are teaching English to kids, right? OK, so from now on you stop telling them to write all those grammar rules in their notebooks. You quit doing boring, ‘artificial’, book-based lessons. You make them love you and your lessons.This blog is created to bring you many super creative ways to teach your kids and introduce new quality to your teaching, you have my word ;)
xoxo
Mrs Edi
Andrzejki to doskonała okazja, aby do naszych klas wprowadzić na chwilę magiczny i tajemniczy nastrój. Pod przykrywką przepowiadania przyszłości nauczymy ich paru cennych zwrotów, czasu przyszłego oraz nazw zawodów. Zabawa, którą dla was przygotowałam, to przepowiadanie przyszłości.
Magiczne plansze
Trzeba wcielić się w rolę wróżki (fortune teller), a może założyć kostium? Zaproście do swojego stolika kolejno dzieci, aby wywróżyć im jaki zawód będą wykonywać w przyszłości (who will you be in the future), bądź ilu będą mieć potomków (how many children will you have). Przygotujcie magiczne plansze, karteczki z kierunkami (dostępne poniżej) i kulę. Jeśli nie masz specjalnej kuli użyj choćby balona jak poniżej:
Balon jako kryształowa kula
Ale jak stwierdzili moi uczniowie: "Takie kule można kupić w biedronce" ;). Poproście ucznia, aby dotknął obiema dłońmi kryształowej kuli i wypowiedział magiczną sentencje: "Crystal ball tell me my future!". Następnie poproście, aby wybrał 3 karteczki, jedna po drugiej, na których zapisane jest w jakim kierunku należy poruszać się po magicznej planszy. Trzeci kierunek ujawni przyszłość ucznia - np. "You will be a teacher!".
Sami obejrzyjcie:
Aby dzieci wczuły się w atmosferę zachęcam do włączenia muzyczki w tle. Ja wybrałam tą dla nieco starszych: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr9JVhr4R5Q. Jeśli jednak uważacie, że może ona wystraszyć waszych uczniów spróbujcie poszukać czegoś innego.
Do you often give rewards to your students? Give them wisely!
First of all remember that any kind of material reward is an external motivation. Avoid it, if it's not necessary! Try to develop internal motivation in your students e.g. by doing interesting and innovational lessons. Sometimes, however, especially with younger learners you need to motivate them with "prizes". I want to show you that by giving them a reward you can actually teach them something. You can give the pieces of a puzzle to your students for their amazing accomplishments. Puzzles are the images of historical people, landmarks, symbols etc. It looks like this:
Don't tell your students what's on the picture until they guess it themselves! Their task is to collect... piece by piece... the more they have the bigger chance to guess what the image shows. They will ask their parents about that (which is also a good thing, because they get involved). Who guesses first -gets an extra piece! When the last kid collect all the pieces, you can make a lesson about the symbol from the picture they collected. These lessons are usually the best lessons - my students really love it and, what's more important, they remember it! This is typical win-win situation, they get their prize and I don't have this feeling of senseless rewarding because I smuggle some knowledge in it :)
I made such books, use them to reward your students!
In this quick post I want to show you that a marker is enough to create an AMAZING and MEMORABLE LESSON for kids.
Wanna introduce CULTURE & HISTORY to your students but you don't wanna bore them to death? Use drawings! It's really important, especially with ESL young learners who don't understand much of a language yet, to SUPPORT YOUR STORIES WITH DRAWINGS. You will make your story easier to understand and more interesting to listen to. Avoid too many details - focus on the most important things. Don't tell it to fast, be energetic and use gestures. Ask questions while telling the story, they can be obvious and easy, just to keep the students attention. You can look for some music related to events you wanna tell kids about and play it quietly. This will help your students to go deeper into the atmosphere of what you're saying. After telling the story try to think of one particular symbol your kids should remember and let them draw this. You can show them how to draw the symbol step by step, they like it very much and listen to instructions in English carefully. The amazing fact is, that we apparently draw the same thing, but at the end each picture is different and unique. If you can't draw something yourself, use 'how to draw' videos from Youtube like me:)
Thanksgiving - Pilgrims by Kamilka
This way you teach your kids language, culture and develop their artistic skills. I love such lessons, and my kids love it either.
Watch how we did this:
Use this scrip to draw and tell the story: 400 hundred years ago there were some people in England.
There were also some other people who wanted to hurt these people. So these
people had to run away. They decided to
go to America. How did they go to america? By plane? By cars? Of course by a
ship, ship named Mayflower. They sailed and sailed… and sailed… and then they
saw the land. They were very happy but they had a biiig problem. There was
winter! Is it easy to built houses in winter? Nooo. Is it easy to grow vegetables in winter? Nooo.
Many people died because they were cold and hungry. But soon spring came, sun
was shining and it was warm again.
People were happy again, they could build houses and grow vegetables. Oh
Look – said one pilgrim – Indians are coming! Do you think Indians were good or
bad? Of course they were good, they wanted to help pilgrims! This is a corn for
you, you can grow it – said squanto, one of the indians. Now let’s make a big
dinner and eat together and celebrate together! This dinner was the first
thanksgiving dinner ever! Now, every
year peple eat a big turkey every fourth Thursday of November to say thank you
to God, to their family and friends!
xoxo
Mrs Edi
POLISH VERSION
Opublikowałam ten króciutki post, aby pokazać wam, że wystarczy marker aby stworzyć niesamowitą i pamiętną lekcję dla dzieci.
Chcielibyście opowiedzieć waszym uczniom o kulturze i historii krajów anglojęzycznych i przy okazji nie zanudzić ich na śmierć? Rysujcie! To bardzo pomocne, aby wspierać wasze historie czy inne wypowiedzi w j. angielskim rysunkami, szczególnie jeśli chodzi o młodsze dzieciaczki, które jeszcze nie opanowały na tyle języka, aby zrozumieć wszystko co macie im do przekazania. W ten sposób wasza historia będzie dla nich łatwiejsza do zrozumienia i tym samym stanie się bardziej interesująca. W trakcie opowiadania od czasu do czasu zadawajcie pytania. Niech będą to oczywiste i łatwe pytania po to, aby utrzymać uwagę uczniów. Nie mówcie zbyt szybko a zarazem bądźcie energiczni, dużo gestykulujcie. Możecie wcześniej przygotować muzyczkę, która oddaje klimat historyjki, którą opowiadacie. Ustawcie ją cichutko niech stanowi odpowiednie tło do waszych słów. To sprawi, że uczniowie zanurzą się w niej jeszcze głębiej. Po skończonym opowiadaniu pomyślcie o jakimś symbolicznym aspekcie dotyczącym omawianego tematu, który według Was powinien zapaść im najgłębiej w pamięć. Pozwólcie go dzieciom narysować. Najlepiej jeśli krok po kroku poinstruujecie dzieci jak rysować, samemu rysująć rysunek na tablicy i pozwalając, aby dzieci śledziły Wasze kroki. Dzieciaki to uwielbiają i bardzo fajne jest to, że rysujemy niby to samo, a każdy obrazek jest inny i wyjątkowy na swój sposób. Jeśli nie potraficie rysować wykorzystajcie dostępne choćby na Youtube filmiki zatytułowane 'How to draw... '. Wystarczy wpisać wspomnianą wcześniej frazę i to co chcecie narysować. Jestem pewna, że coś znajdziecie.
Święto Dziękczynienia - Pielgrzymi
Tym sposobem wasza lekcja uczy języka, kultury no i zyskuje również wymiar artystyczny. Uwielbiam takie lekcje, moi uczniowie z resztą też!
Obejrzyjcie naszą lekcję:
Możecie śmiało wykorzystać moją historię do narysowania i opowiedzieć ją swoim uczniom: 400 hundred years ago there were some people in England. There were also some other people who wanted to hurt these people. So these people had to run away. They decided to go to America. How did they go to america? By plane? By cars? Of course by a ship, ship named Mayflower. They sailed and sailed… and sailed… and then they saw the land. They were very happy but they had a biiig problem. There was winter! Is it easy to built houses in winter? Nooo. Is it easy to grow vegetables in winter? Nooo. Many people died because they were cold and hungry. But soon spring came, sun was shining and it was warm again. People were happy again, they could build houses and grow vegetables. Oh Look – said one pilgrim – Indians are coming! Do you think Indians were good or bad? Of course they were good, they wanted to help pilgrims! This is a corn for you, you can grow it – said squanto, one of the indians. Now let’s make a big dinner and eat together and celebrate together! This dinner was the first thanksgiving dinner ever! Now, every year peple eat a big turkey every fourth Thursday of November to say thank you to God, to their family and friends!
Oooooooh ! I'm so excited to share my new idea with you! :)
My love to the popular game Guess Who started when I bought it in second hand for about 5$ (you should better buy games this way, if you don't want to lose a fortune :D). I played few times with my son, in English of course, and he had so much fun that he didn't even mind me speaking English. I played with few more kids and they all loved it, and what's more important they learned - for real.
What does this game actually teaches to kids? Maaaany things: face & body parts, clothes, colours, feelings, verbs 'to have' and 'to be'... It depends on what characters you choose.
What this game is about? We have a collection of images - both players have the same sets. As the name of the game indicates itself the object of Guess Who is to guess who the mysterious face of the opponent is. The game teaches strategic thinking in a way that you must discover your opponents image in the fewest amount of turns. We keep asking YES and NO questions about physical appearance until all but one is left.
How to play this game with many kids? My version of Guess Who has similar rules. I only had to make it bigger, so that we could play in class:
- print out the images you want to use
- laminate them
- prepare some line and clippers
- hang the line somewhere in the classroom and hang the pictures on the line
- divide kids into two teams
- give each team possible question cards (for younger kids draw the pics)
Possible questions cards
A few precious pieces of advice before playing: If you play with little kids e.g. 5,6,7 years old play with pictures from cartoons or some crazy monsters. If you play with older kids use images of famous or historical people - this way, apart from improving language skills, kids can learn who were these people. Remember to analyze the features of the characters with your students before you play, so that you know kids understand everything. You may give kids possible questions cards to make asking question easier for them. You know that kids get bored very fast so when a kid starts wondering what to ask for too long, other kids can get bored and start talking and disturbing, what makes our work harder. Good preparation is important because it can prevent such situation ;) However, I can't promise you that it's gonna be quiet during such a lesson.. Whenever there's fun with kids there's always noisy :D
Watch a video from our lesson to see how we did it:
If you want reality-based teaching in your classroom - play games… Naaaah... not games that are
meant to teach English... Why? This could make your kids feel that they learn
and lower their motivation to learn. Games created to teach English are usually
not so fun as popular games. Use popular games they love. This way you can
easily trick your younger students, that you just wanna play with them ;) Play board
games, card games, playground games, role playing games, singing games,
guessing games etc. This is what we do on our English Board Games Club meetings
!
On our meetings we do a lot of fun things I want to share with you and very often play
board games. Why should you play board games with your kids? Board games make
your work more pleasant and effective.You’re not bored, they’re not bored. Try
to feel like you were their age, like you were 7,8,9 years old. There’s nothing
worse and more motivation-killing than a boring lesson to a kid :P. Apart from improving language skills
and being fun, board games involve competition what increases motivation of
your students. They want to win so much that they always do their best. What's more important board games teach "healthy" competition - how to win and lose with dignity, which is really hard to deal with at early stage of life. Use different kids of games for different purposes. Strategic board games help kids to develop logical thinking. All kinds of trivia games make them gain knowledge from different
areas. There are thousands of games that might be used to improve kids memory, boost their creativity and motivation. OK, there's nothing left but
start playing! You've got at least 13 reasons for that:
