HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Halloween is a fun way of broadening students' general vocabulary and reviewing specific categories like, numbers and colours.  Below are some videos we've been using in class to do just this.

Reviewing numbers: How many fingers?

Five Little Pumpkins

I've been using the following video to introduce the following vocabulary items: green monster, scary witch, black cat, white ghost.
We've reviewed colours, done some classroom theatre (students wear symbolic costumes - witch's hat, my sons old sheet ghost costume, etc. - that I've been taking to class and have taken turns playing the above halloween characters while the rest shout, "go away").  This is also good input for introducing students to ADJECTIVE+NOUN word order.

Developing students' cultural knowledge of the target language (in this case, English) is vital as it helps them to contextualise language.  The following videos introduce Halloween as a cultural event.

These videos can be used as a way of extending vocabulary.

I hope you have fun with these.

Until next time,

Janine

FAMILY

I've started working on family vocabulary with my youngest students who are responding very nicely to classroom routine songs and actions.

KEY VOCABULARY: mommy, daddy, baby (extension for older students - sister, brother, grandmother, grandfather)

In addition, I've used personal family photos to reinforce and "test" comprehension.

The following songs accompanied by appropriate actions have worked really well to introduce children to the key vocabulary.

The Finger Family

Rain Rain Go Away

The Wheels On The Bus

Until next time!

Janine

More routines and colours

This week, we extended our work on routines to include the weather and asking "How are you?". Students are being introduced to table-time where they do work related to the oral language learnt.  This is a great opportunity to use vocabulary related to school and school materials such as pencil, paper, crayons and to review vocabulary already being developed on a daily basis such as colours and numbers.
When giving instructions, simple clear language is used.  Always accompany your instructions (or any other utterance) with lots of visual aids, simple and easy to understand gestures and vocal cues.
- "Look! It's sunny!"
- "Draw a sunny day."
- "Where's your pencil?"
- "Use a yellow crayon."

With the three-year olds, I've started introducing family words: mommy, daddy and baby.

Below are some videos I used to reinforce the language developed orally earlier in the class.  I usually only use these in the last few minutes of the class as it is important that they learn to develop their listening skills and get into the habit of interpreting what I'm saying by "reading" my gestures and vocal cues.

Table time: cleaning up

Greetings

The Weather

Colours

Remember that children, especially very young children, will always respond much better to personal interaction through songs, games, simple conversations with puppets, etc.

Until next time,

Janine