The Christmas Story for Very Young Learners

Isn't this one of the best times of year? Working with children makes you feel extra Christmassy and there is so, so much material out there. This year I'm focussing on the Christmas story and the song 'We wish you a merry Christmas' with my 4-6 year olds.

Topic: the Christmas Story

Age: 4-6

Vocabulary: Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, Angels, Shepherds, 3 kings, star, knock knock, no sorry, let's go!

Procedure:

• Drill  flashcards of the angels, sheperds, star, kings and mary joseph and the donkey. 
• Pre teach gestures that go with these flashcards.
• Play musical statues, with a christmas song, like rocking around the christmas tree and call out the actions, eg. "Angel!", everybody must stop and stand like an angel.
• Draw Bethlehem on the board and stick mary, joseph and the donkey far away. Start to tell the story of Christmas. Children can knock with you and say 'sorry no' each time they find nowhere to stay. 
• Then on the fourth time, draw a stable, with a star and place the characters there. 
• Now back to the hills near bethlehem! The shepherds are sleeping so get the children to snore. The angels wake them up 'A king is born! go to Bethlehem!" and the shepherds reply "lets go!" and the sheep can baa 'let's go!' too. Get the children to repeat these phrases after you. Add the characters to the nativity scene. 
• Next it's the 3 kings' turn. Stand even far away from the board and point to the star over the stable and say " a star! a king is born! let's go!"  and make them proceed around the classroom to the board and add them. 
• When you retell the story the following lesson give everychild a mini flashcard and get them to come and stick them on the board at the right moment.

lucypaintbox.org.uk has this lovely nativity scene to colour in.

Here is a link to some memory cards, which you could use in many many ways. (I plan to play memory with just the shepherd, king, mary, jospeh, angel and donkey). 

And here is one very silly Mr Bean video!

Incey Wincey Spider

Incey Wincey Spider, the nursery rhyme, is a favourite with TEFL teachers. It already comes with hand gestures and online videos and pictures galore. What you may not know though, is that there are also Incey Wincey Spider story books out there by Keith Chapman and Jack Tickle, with Incey Wincey spider as the main character.

In this book, our little spider gets sent flying by a gust of wind and meets all sort of different farm animals on his journey. The pages are big and the silk webs are glittery making them fun to follow with your finger.

Age: 4-6 It was a big hit with the four year olds.

Language points:

The nursery rhyme features the rain and the sun, so it can be a good idea to teach other weather nouns too. I chose wind, as it's in the book, but it could be a good idea to teach  snow and clouds too. The book features the farm animals cow, horse, cockerel (I used chicken instead) goat, duck and pig.

It's also good for reviewing the animal noises and colours.


Procedure:

Start the lesson by teaching the types of weather plus the words 'incey wincey spider' and 'water spout.' Play the say yes when you see the.... game (jump for yes, twist for no) and drill actions. You could also play simon says.

Slowly say the words and demonstrate the actions. Encourage children to do the actions for you. This video shows you how.

• Read the story, encouraging children to say the names of the animals and make the noises with you. (I didn't do the story in the first lesson as I focussed on the rhyme, but in my second and third).
• Table time: I drew a picture of a spider web next to a water spout and the children had to draw the spider and colour it in. This was a big hit.
• Drill the rhyme again and encourage the older children especially, to join in with the words. It could be a good time to introduce the melody too.
• Watch the video with the children.

Extensions:

Draw pictures with different skies, windy, snowy, sunny and rainy for example. I gave my students a worksheet with four different houses and the words to trace underneath. I drew a girl outside wearing appropriate clothes for each sky to help comprehension.

or:

Pipe cleaner spider craft, if you have enough pipe cleaners!

Googly eyes optional...

Complete with water spout for reenactments!

It's also possible to go back and use those songs and videos from the Old Mac Donald Had a Farm lesson as revision. Recycle, recycle, recycle!

Halloween with Very Young Learners

Hooray, hooray. It's that time of year when every single lesson you do for a week has a Halloween theme! The good thing about Halloween is that there are loads of resources out there online for free. Dreamenglish.com has it covered when it comes to Halloween. You can find the video and book on the site here. There is also a video of the book AND a video of the dance.


Topic: Halloween

Age: 4-6

Vocabulary: eyes, nose, teeth, scary, happy halloween, pumpkin, my favourite

Procedure:

1. Ask the children in L1 who is going to a Halloween party. Let them tell you about the costumes they want to wear. Then ask them if they know what pumpkins are and why we make them (to scare away witches) I think it's worth spending some time on this to gain their interest.

2. Tell the 'My favourite pumpkin' story with the book. Then sing the song without watching the video but with actions.

3. Using some triangle and circular and cresent stencils (I make mine from thick cardboad) the children make their own pumpkin face, including the eyes, nose and teeth and colour. I give them the outline of a pumpkin to start with.

(Fast finishers could make another or do the pumpin counting worksheet on dreamenglish.com.

4. Watch the video of the this is my favourite pumpkin song and dance (or just do the hand actions if the class is big).

5. Finish the lesson by saying 'Happy Halloween!'

Extensions:

Introduce happy, sad, tired, angry and scared. Ask the children to mime the expressions and then draw pumpkins with those expressions.

Take in sweets and candy and say 'TRICK OR TREAT!'

I Want My Dinner

I Want My Dinner is a book by Tony Ross that is perfect for teaching 'please' and 'thank you'.

Age: 4-6 years

Vocabulary: please thank you, king, queen, prince (the book says general but prince makes more sense), princess.

Phrases: "Say please!" "I want my dinner" "I want the toilet" (I changed it from potty so that the children can learn a more useful phrase) and "I want my teddy."


Procedure:

Tell the story, asking the children to repeat the spoken words after you in the voices for the different characters. Bang your fists on your knees as the princess demands different things, adding the word please in a polite tone of voice, with your hands in a praying gesture. For the beastie, use a deep voice but the same intonation. I use some L1 when presenting the story the first time, to see if they know what word the beastie has forgotten to say once he gets his dinner back.

Extension: Use the key hole card to hide the pictures and elicit the people on the page.

Draw a castle and the children must add the prince, princess, king and queen.

Children can complete a picture of the princess with her teddy, dinner and potty. You could trace/copy some of the pictures in the book with dotted lines and let children finish them.

Make a paper crown and decorate.

source

This video by super simple songs also teaches please and thank you very nicely. You can easily incorporate big and small into the story too (the small princess and the big beastie).

20 Flashcard Games

Flashcards are generally the first thing I get out in a lesson. We use them to present language, drill and review and test it. 

The students might see those flashcards multiple times so it's important to keep it fresh. Here is a list of flashcard techniques which I go back to whenever I feel what I'm doing is getting a bit stale.

1. Say the flashcard
2. Guess the card (show one student a card, other students must guess which card they saw. The winner gets to see the next card)
3. Quick/slow reveal
4. Disappearing cards (turn them over one at a time and keep repeating the whole sequence until the class remember it by heart and all the flashcards are turned over)
5. Let a student be the teacher
6. Kim's game (take one out and then lay them out again)
7. Jump when you see the....
8. Yes or No? Jump for yes and twist with hands on hips for no.
9. Through the keyhole (make a keyhole in a piece of A4 card for children to look through.
10. Pass the flashcard round the circle (extra difficult - send two in different directions)
11. Make a circle with flashcards and use the dice to make a board game. Kids count round and say the flashcard they land on.
12. Stick the flashcards to a giant cube/dice and let the kids roll.
13. Run and touch (put the kids in lines and flashcards on the wall)
14. Leap frog from mes-english with rock paper scissors.
15. Postman (The post goes from scissors to pen) The children sit in a circle and the caller stand in the middle and calls and tries to steal a space.
16. Memory
17. Place flashcards around the room and shut your eyes. Kids must stand under a flashcard. The name of the flashcard you call is out/the winner.
18. Mime the flashcard 
19. Treasure hunt - hide the flashcards around the room (for smaller classes)
20. Tabboo - describe the flashcard 

Old MacDonald Had a Farm

Age: 4-6 years

Language: Hello/ How are you/ I'm fine thank you/ Animal vocab: Dog, cow, horse, sheep, chicken, farm.

Procedure:

1. Drill Hello, How are you and I'm fine thank you. Check meaning.
2. Sing Hello song.  (Hello, hello, how are you? I'm fine thank you I'm fine thank you, hello hello hello - to the tune of "Hi Ho Hi Ho"). 
3. Take your animal flashcards and put them behind an A4 card 'door' with keyhole cut out in the middle. Students guess the animals. Say hello to the animal, ask the kids to ask the animal "how are you?" and reply in the animals voice, for example bleating 'I'm fine thank you'. Then get the kids to repeat. I put a scary dog behind the last one who we have to slam the door shut on and scream. 
4. Get the kids standing up and dancing to Old MacDonald had a farm. Sing it without the music first and sing it slowly. 

Old MacDonald had a farm (hold onto your braces and bob from side to side)

EIEIO (do windscreen wiper hands)

And on that farm he had a -elicit flashcard- (hold onto your braces and bob from side to side)

EIEIO (do windscreen wiper hands)

-Elicit noise the animal makes-

eg. woof woof woof. woof woof woof. woof. woof. woof woof woof. (The kids cannot sing the full version so just make the noises along with the rythm. 

Old MacDonald had a farm (hold onto your braces and bob from side to side)

EIEIO (do windscreen wiper hands)

5. Play the start of the video. What animals can they hear?

6. Play the whole video, pausing every time a new animal starts to appear.

7. Sing along.

Extensions:

Draw and number six fields with a farm in the middle and do a listening dictation. Eg. "Draw a cow in number 3". This will be difficult for them so leave some fields for their imaginiation, and divide the activity over two lessons.

Match halves of the animals worksheet. 

Teach pig and duck. Play musical statues 'walking around the farm' (I do it on the spot in a small figure of 8) in the style of the different animals to this song. Introduce this phase by talking about the concept of 'dance bubbles', in that noone can leave their own or enter other people's!

Then show them the video and encourage them to join in.

3 Rules for Conversation Classes

Whenever you start with a new class it's always a good idea to start with your expectations.

Must and Mustn't is another good language point for reviewing classroom rules!

 I have used just three for the past three years which cover pretty much anything.

1. Come prepared (phones in your bag with your homework and books etc.)

2. Respect your classmates (pretty much any kind of unwanted behaviour can be filed under this!)

3. Respect the classroom (rubbish goes in the bin, tidy up etc...)

I imagine you have something similar. These rules are good for older kids and teenagers, but they don't work very well for conversation classes. Italian children spend most of their time working in silence or very quietly even in nursery, so a class where they are supposed to speak can be very novel for them. So this year I have been working on a new set which apply to kids from kindergarten all the way to the end of primary school.

1. Listen and look in silence when the teacher is talking.

2. Put your hand up and wait in silence to speak.

3. Use your "classroom voice".

The third one is particularly important as large classes can get deafeningly loud very fast and kids love to shout when they get over excited. The class will still be loud, but hopefully not disturbing the rest of the school! Try modelling unacceptably loud and quiet voices and see if they think that's Ok. Often when I whisper 'Can we speak like this?' the kids say 'yes' but of course you the teacher still need to be able to hear the kids at the back. Maybe talk about the fact that it's fine to shout when you play football or in the playground but not inside.

Essentially, the bigger the conversation you have about it with the children the more likely they are to remember the rule and the less likely you are to finish with no voice and a headache.

The key is to start every lesson eliciting the rules, until you have the class eating out of your hand. Kids love it as it's a routine and builds their trust in you. You love it because it reminds you of your own rules.

Kids may suggest other rules like 'no hitting'. When they do I always reply that it is true but that is a rule for little kids and that they know that already (even four year olds like to be flattered like this!).

Rules like this just make you want to try head butting someone!

***

Ps. I didn't put speak English on there. I prefer to only use rules I am able to enforce. Demanding 24 eight year olds to speak in English only will not result in 24 eight year olds speaking in English only. I'll write more on getting children to speak English another day.

PPs. So what if it's no longer the first lesson and you forgot to set rules? No matter. Tell the kids that the previous lessons were part of a 'getting to know you/introductory phase' and that now that the course is seriously starting these are your rules... ;)

First Lesson Ideas

Here are some first lesson ideas for that first lesson of the year after the holidays and you can't remember what this teaching thing is all about....

The first lesson is all about to establishing a routine and yourself as a teacher not a friend or 'helper'. This is especially important if you are there just to teach conversation, not as a regular English teacher.

Remember to:

• get students to write their names on any books or materials. Take photos of students too young to write their names to print and stick on things later.
• learn students' names (especially the naughty ones!)
• set rules 
• establish you getting silence routine
• establish a points system or behaviour system.
• establish entering and exiting routine
• For older students:
• check/teach  classroom phrases like 'can I go to the bathroom please?' and simple instructions eg. 'read'
• check stationery and classroom vocabulary
• practice English Only routine, for older students.
• review alphabet and spelling, (especially the letters A,E, I and Y if your students are Italian)
  
  
  
  

If you have time ice breakers are fun to do with older students, but definitely need to be preceded with rules about how to participate.

• Swap business cards mingle (How are you? I'm....)
• Find someone who...
• The memory name game (I'm Laruchka the lemur, this is Eleonora the elephant...)
• Throw the ball or soft toy with questions and the student who catches answering.
• Pass the pen 'microphone' around the circle (a variation on throwing a ball or soft toy).
• Passport control roleplay. They can prepare it in pairs and at the end of the lesson on their way out they can role play with you the teacher.

Students love to learn something about their teachers:

• Spelling dictation with personal information, eg. L.A.R.U.C.H.K.A and M.I.L.A.N. Students then guess what relevance those words have for you.
• Students can write questions for you on slips of paper and you will only answer if they are gramatically correct.
  

If you want to do something crafty make mini origami 'all about me' books with an A4 sheet of paper or passports. Read them out (without mentioning the name!) and the class must guess who they belong to.