Teaching days of the week and months

In this post, I am going to write about some ways of introducing, practicing and revising the days of the week and months.

SONGS                                                                                                                                                    

When it comes to this topic, normally, kids already have at least an oral basis aquired in the kindergarten. So, the main challenge is to teach them to write both the days of the week and the months. There are two songs that I find very useful while introducing or revising these two concepts:

1. ''What day is it today?'' you can find it in Islands 2, by Pearson.

2. ''I know the months of the year'' in Sprint 2, by Richmond

Both songs are really catchy and you can also use them as warm-up/restore the discipline songs for later on. If you can't get the first song, you can do it as a chant. It goes like this:

What day is it today?

It's Monday, It's Monday

Clap your hands for Monday!

Then, for the remaining days the song is the same, but the last line changes. And so:

Tuesday: stamp your feet for Tuesday

Wednesday: jump up and down for Wednesday

Thursday: hop up and down for Thursday

Friday: Say ''hurrah'' for Friday

Or, you can introduce your own action verbs, for example, the ones you've been working on in class.

There are many ways to work around this song. When the kids learn to sing it, you can ask them what day corresponds to which action.E.g.:

T: Hop up and down for.....

Ss:...Tuesday!

Or simply mime the action and kids have to say/write the corresponding day.

The second song taken from Sprint is very easy to learn. Children master it amazingly quickly. It teaches a good pronunciation as all the months are pronunced very clearly. I start all my classes with this song until children can sing it perfectly well.

GAMES

1.  Pass that ball!

Ss pass a ball to their classmates (I think it's best done sitting to avoid too much chaos) and saying the following months of the year:

S1: January   S2: February  S3: March....etc

If a student makes a mistake or drops the ball, he/she doesn't participate in the next round. The last remaining person wins. 

Variation: if you see it's too easy for your pupils, you can intervene and say Ss have to say the months backwards every time you say: BACKWARDS (e.g. S1: January S2: December S3: November) you can also introduce a time limit.

TIP: Ss who are elimnated are asked to stand up or cross their arms. The latter option is better if the group is rather fidgety.

2. Organise a day of the week/month of the week duel.

T asks two Ss to come in front of the class and starts with a month of his/her choice (e.g. March). S1 continues: April, S2: May until one of them makes a mistake and is eliminated. In order to make it more challenging, you can require the Ss to go faster and faster or say the months backwards or...spell them.

WRITING ACTIVITIES

- unscramble days of the week/months (a follow-up activtiy: Ss prepare their own ''scrambled'' examples, my kids love doing that!)

- for more advanced groups: Ss prepare a table in their notebook and write down what they do each day. Depending on your ss' level, you can write down some actions, such as: go to school, do my homework, etc

- wordsearch

- spelling dictation

Teaching difficult vocabulary items

Most of the words our young pupils have to learn are relatively easy, but some of them may present quite a challenge! Like, for instance,'' trousers'' or ''wardrobe'' that are not even remotely similar to any Spanish words. So, how can we go about it in order to help the kids assimilate these words?

These are some of the ways I employ in my classroom.

1. Personalise!

When the ''clothes'' topic comes up, I always say that ''trousers'' is my very favourite word. And I keep repeating it. Children love to know stuff about their teachers and as it draws their attention, it becomes easier to remember the word. After some time, when I ask what my favourite word is almost everybody identifies it as ''trousers''!

2. Repeat in a fun way!

Repeating the words in various ways is also pretty effective. You can whisper them and make the kids do it, too, you can sing, shout, draw them in the air - whatever that makes it memorable!

3. Word of the week!

When I had to teach ''wardrobe'' I pinned it into our English corner as a ''word of the week'' and I referred to it as often as I could.

4. Print the words out and put them on the wall.

I always put the most important words on the wall and I highlight the most difficult ones. Sometimes I even asked my students to decorate the most complicated words.

5.Funny gestures

You can also ask the kids to think of a funny gesture to associate with the word you're teaching. Then, you tell them that each time you (or them!) make this gesture, the first person to say the word out loud, wins a point.

6. Rhyme.

Some time ago, I had to teach the word ''straight'' (as in ''I've got straight hair'') and I couldn't think of any fun way to do it. Then, it struck me: it rhymes with ''eight''! So, I draw an ''eight'' with ''straight hair'' on the board in a really funny way and I said: ''Hey, it's an eight and, look, its hair is straight!'' The kids loved the rhyme and they memorised it immediately.

7. See, smell and feel

I very often bring real objects to my classroom. For example, I always bring vegetables and fruit and I let the kids use all their senses to remember what they are called. They first see, then smell and feel them. It works especially well with the items that kids are not normally familiar with (e.g. an avocado, a grapefruit,etc)

To sum it up, it's all about making the difficult word memorable.

Good luck!

How to use flashcards in the classroom

You can't overestimate the importance of using flashcards* in the classroom, especially in the first cycle. 

First of all, they let you avoid using the mother tongue to translate. You show the image and the kids know immediately what the new word means. Secondly, children love pictures, posters and other visual aids, so if you use flashcards properly, it will guarantee you their undivided attention, which will result in faster and effective learning.

Also, the key to success is INVOLVE the kids in the process of learning. So...don't keep the flashcards to yourself! Let your students play with them, touch them and look at them closely. Apart from the flashcards, I always add wordcards. Luckily, the publishing houses have discovered that method, too, so next year when we change the coursebook, there is a good chance I won't have to prepare them anymore.

Enough with theory and let's get down to some practice.

STAGE ONE: Introducing new vocabulary

- Traditional way: show the flashcards to the kids and attach them to the board. Then, put the corresponding wordcard next to them.

More ideas to break the routine: Let the kids guess what the objects are by revealing the picture slowly, uncovering it step by step. You can also use this method for revisions.

STAGE TWO: Practice

 -Traditional way: Leave the flashcards as they were and mix up the wordcards (or you can do it the other way round). Individual students have to come to the board and match the words with the pictures again. 

Variation: Instead of moving the wordcards, they can also match them by drawing a line.

More ideas to break the routine: Play a ''what's missing'' game. Tell your pupils to close their eyes. When they are ready, remove one flashcard or wordcard (or both). The first person to guess what the missing word or picture is, wins. After two or three times, you may invite one of the students to take off the word/picture they want. I use the following commands for this game:

one, two, three....close your eyes!

one, two, three... open your eyes! Look at the board. What's missing?

Idea 2: Invite some students to come to the front of the classroom. Ss form a circle. Play some music and pass the flascards. Students have to keep passing the flashcards until the music stops. Then, they have to name the objects on their flashcards. If they don't know them, they have to leave the circle. Student who last leaves the circle, wins.

Idea 3: Play a memory game on the board. Display the flashcards and the wordcards with their faces down. Children  have to uncover the cards and they get a point if the uncovered picture matches the word.

STAGE THREE: Production 

- Traditional way: Slowly, take off the wordcards and ask children to name the pictures on the flashcards. When you finish, ask the kids if they can name all the objects. Help, if necessary.

More ideas to break the routine: Kids prepare their own flashcards. Then, they play with them in pairs. Person A says: What's this? Person B says the word. The one who guesses more words, wins.

Idea 2: Take off all the wordcards. In their notebooks, students have to copy the pictures and write the correct words next to them. Help out with the spelling, if necessary.

There are of course more ideas you can employ while using flashcards, the sky is the limit! Now, if you don't have enough flashcards that come with your book or you want to extend the vocabulary you teach, have a look at these three websites that have a lot of flashcards ready-to-use:

http://www.esl-kids.com/flashcards/flashcards.html

http://www.eslflashcards.com/

http://www.mes-english.com/flashcards.php
http://www.kids-pages.com/flashcards.htm

* by ''flashcards'' we understand here a set of cards with pictures on them.

An overview of some new coursebooks for primary

It seems that this year is a year of novelties on the market for ESL primary coursebooks. I've had the pleasure to see some of them, so, I've decided to share my impressions on the blog.

We live in an digital age

...and it simply must be reflected on the teaching methods. While the new coursebooks I'll be writing about in this article are offering a wide range of different teaching solutions, they are all placing a great emphasis on the digital component. So, a multi-rom both for the teachers and the students contaning a digital version of the book, games, worksheets, etc, is not a luxury anymore, it's a must.

Publishing houses are making teachers' work easier

...this promise has never sounded more real. All of the new methods are coming with lots of teaching resources, both off- and online. Some of them are even editable.

Learning English is not only about the language

...which means that the new books are just packed with all sorts of activities related not only to the English (or other English-speaking countries) culture, but also to other subject (so called ''cross-curricular'').

Having said that, let's concentrate on the details. I'm going to present four new books:

''Islands'' by Pearson

''Lighthouse'' by Richmond

''Brainwave'' by Macmillan

''Ace!'' by Oxford

The importance of choosing the right book

The decision has been made: we want to change our English coursebook. So, we have already had two meetings with the most important publishing houses and next week, we are going to have a final presentation before we start to discuss all available options.

This experience has really made me think about what to expect from a good book and the importance of the extra components and other ''benefits'' that go with it. Apart from it, when you´re faced with so many colourful and multimedia-packed, supercool books, you can get totally confused and lose your most important objectives of sight. That's why I thought that it would be a good idea to just sit down in peace and quiet and try to come up with some guidelines on how to choose a good coursebook for the primary stage.

While we, as teachers, can have different views on how to use the coursebook, that is, whether we rely on it 100% or we just use it as little as possible, but frequently enough to make the parents happy, I think we could all agree that a bad book can make a teacher´s life pretty miserable! I've been experiencing this myself for more than a year now. The book we are using is, to put it mildly, a nightmare, mostly, because it's very impractical and, from my point of view, very poor when it comes to its methodological solutions.

Why do I hate my book so much? Maybe if we concentrate for a short while on what a BAD coursebook is, by contrast, we can have a clearer picture of what a GOOD book is?

First of all, I don´t agree with the vocabulary it choses to introduce and I don't understand why it totally ignores the classroom language. I´ve always assumed that we should teach our students in the most natural way, taking into consideration their needs, environment and the language itself so that it can be useful, fun and practical.

Well, let´s take the first grade. My kids are 5 to 6 years old and the key to motivate them to learn English is, basically, to get them curious and interested. Moreover, the vocabulary we´re dealing with should be familiar and useful. Unit 4 in my book revolves around the house and the furniture. Nice topic. And these are the furniture items it introduces:

bed, fridge, cooker, sink, drawer, wardrobe, bath

I agree with bed and fridge, maybe the wardrobe, too. But...sink? drawer? cooker? What's the point? Wouldn't the mirror, cupboard, carpet and some basic parts of a house, like, door, window, floor, roof make more sense? Needless to say that even my brightest students and after two weeks of recycling these words, they are still struggling with the wardrobe and the drawer.

Now the grammar part. Unit 2. The book introduces ''This is'' and ''These are''. Right, I could agree, although the kids have forgotten pretty quickly about ''these are'', but never mind, could be useful. But then, in the workbook (sorry, nowadays workbooks are called activity books, for whatever, maybe a purely marketing reason?) the exercises are designed to practice...''it is'' and ''they are''. The kids are confused and so is their teacher.

I could write many more paragraphs evalulating the books methodology, usefulness, etc, but let's just summarise these ''bad''   points quickly. So, a bad book:

- choses to introduce vocabulary that is not perceived by the kids as useful or fun

- introduces too much or too little grammar and does it in a confusing way

- makes some units really hard, while some are too easy, there is no balance in this respect.

- has boring songs or songs that are mostly too difficult to learn

- does not introduce enough functional language (oh, this is sooo important and soo lacking in my book), which, in return, does not give a proper base for kids to speak and understand English in the classroom.

- has boring and not motivating readings, chants, poems, etc

- last but not least: is not accompanied by any extra teaching materials, such as, flashcards, additional and photocopiable worksheets for mixed-ability classes, exams that include listening comprehension tasks (and, depending on the level, other skills, too), CD-roms with games or films.

Unfortunately, all of the above holds true when it comes to the book we are using. in our school.No wonder that we are tired of dancing around the book to make it more bearable for the kids. When you have, as it is in my case, 8 groups and more than 200 students, the coursebook should AT LEAST make your life easier, and not more difficult!

To sum it up, the book we will be looking for should:

- be adequate for the number of English classes that kids have per week (in our case, 4 hrs weekly)

- be entertaining, but at the same time promoting good values and helping the kids to develop their social skills

- be preferably focusing on short activities (naturally, getting longer on the higher levels) that are varied in terms of the teaching goals

- be accompanied by various teaching materials, both audio and visual

- be accompanied by a good teacher's book that provides the teacher with plenty of ideas and flexibility

-  include a short summary of the learning contents (e.g. a picture dictionary for each unit, a grammar summary,etc) preferably at the end of the book, which would also help the parents assist their children while revising, for example, for an exam.

- include editable and protected from the outside world tests

I do realize this is a lot to be asking for and that we will probably have to give up on some of the above mentioned points... I'll let you know as soon as we make the decision!