Bloom's taxonomy and English language learners

Your English language learners should be developing thinking skills as they acquire English.

This is an interesting article that can help teachers to improve the quality of their work.

Click on the subject. Hope you find it helpful.

Video-Book

This is an example of a great way to teach our children. It's a book that it's being narrated by the author as it shows the pictures of what is happening. Hope you enjoy it with your students.

We uploaded the video, but you can also watch it by clicking on Video-Book :)

The Universe

Our universe is a large and unimaginable expanse of dust, gas, stars, clouds, galaxies, and life. Distant worlds waiting to be explored by future space craft. But what is the Universe?

Discover a simple software to teach The Universe to our children. Click on The Universe.

Drama with children

For young children it can be intimidating to speak a foreign language in front of other people. Even five-year-olds can be scared of making mistakes and looking silly or it may just be that they are shy and don’t want to talk in class. One way of reaching these children is through drama. By giving roles to your pupils they can ‘hide’ behind the character and lose some of their inhibitions. Before actually performing though there are several processes you can go through with the children to create a theatrical environment.

Here are a few suggestions on using a range of drama related activities and creating supporting tools like masks and theatres that will help you play with the language with your students and have lots of fun at the same time.

Warm up activities
For very young learners you can simply smile and ask them to copy you. Then show them a sad face and again ask them to copy you. Pretend to laugh, cry, sing, hide your face and each time ask them to copy you. This is a quick and effective way to focus the children on the lesson, get them calm and introduce them to pretending to be different people.

For slightly older children take any sort of object like a ball, book, paper clip or pen and pretend it’s something else. So pretend to brush your hair with the book and then pass it on and ask the next person to pretend it’s something else and so on. If the class know the word in English they can guess what the object is meant to be.

Making puppets and theatres
Take a shoe box and remove the lid. The lid can be used underneath to stabilize the theatre if need be. Cut out the bottom side of the box leaving a few centimetres around the edges. Then cut out both ends of the box (the shorter ends) again leaving a few centimetres around the edge. These ends will act as the wings from which the characters will make their entrances.

The children can decorate the box theatre themselves with card, paper, pens, glitter… Due to the size of the box it’s easier if each child decorates a separate piece of card to then be stuck onto the box. Out of the back of the box going away from the audience you should stick two long sticks or straws coming out horizontally.
For the scene changes in groups they can design back drops that can be attached to a long stick which in turn can be placed onto the protruding sticks coming out of the back of the box theatre.

Making masks and costumes
You don’t need to make elaborate costumes for children to feel like a different character. A symbolic paper crown can make someone a king, or a magic wand made out of card can transform someone into a witch. Concentrate on keeping it simple as the objective is to eventually perform a scene, practise some English, learn English instructions, arouse interest in drama and English alike, but not to spend three weeks making a spectacular Elizabethan costume.

Writing scripts
Two key points to think about: keep the stories short and simple and allow the children the possibility to use their imagination. These activities can be adapted for the younger learners by keeping the story reproduction an oral activity with the use of picture flashcards to prompt ideas and words they have at their disposal.

Split your class into small groups and allocate a scene to each group. They can then re-tell the scene from what they remember. Any changes they make will only make the story richer!

An alternative is that each group re-tells the whole story making two changes. They then practise saying their script and then tell it to the class who has to find the two changes that have been made. Give them a pre-prepared script. In their groups they have to change the end of the story.

Make your own puppet...click on Drama with children.

Zoo Animals

Children love learning about animals, especially ones which are big, scary, colourful, wild, and potentially dangerous! Once you have them captivated by the subject you’ll find that they are more than eager to learn the English vocabulary needed to talk about it. There are hundreds of language focus points you can develop when doing topics on zoo animals. Here are just some ideas to get you started.

Introducing vocabulary

Zoo animals - zebras, elephants, hippos, ostriches, tigers, lions, giraffes, monkeys, peacocks, bears, seals, penguins…

What do zoo animals eat?

Study the different types of food that zoo animals eat. Part of the fun of going to a zoo is watching the animals being fed. Discover how often they should be fed and what exactly they eat.

What noises do they make?

You may find that where you teach the animals make different noises to those back home! This is generally true of farm and domestic animals (cats, dogs, cows, ducks etc) but see if any zoo animals make different noises. The children will love making the noises to compare to your English zoo animal noises.

Colours of the zoo

Animals and birds such as parrots, pink flamingos, giraffes, lions, zebras, etc. are a great way of learning new colours and pattern vocabulary such as stripes, dots, zigzags, multicoloured, etc. You could draw outlines of the animals for the children to fill in with the correct colours and patterns. Easily adapted to younger learners.

Zoo games

Sleeping lions

Great for the end of a lesson as a calming activity. Everyone has to put their heads n their folded arms on their desks and keep as still as possible. If they move they are out!

Stick the tail on the elephant

Draw a large picture of the back of an elephant. Blindfold the children, gently spin them around and urge them into the direction of the elephant poster holding the tail of the elephant with a piece of blu-tack. Draw a number next to where they put the tail, have a number per student and see who’s the closet at the end of the game.

Click on the subject so you can get free flashcards of different kinds of animals. Enjoy! :)

ESL/EFL Classroom

This is a link were English teachers can find games and activities that are useful in the classroom. If you know a game or an activity that works well with ESL/EFL students you may post it on this blog.

Click on ESL/EFL Classroom.

Teaching Numbers

This site presents the numbers from 1 to 30. You will find the correct pronunciation of every number. It's very usefull for young learners and teachers.

Nursery Rhymes

The term nursery rhyme is used for ‘traditional’ songs for young children in Britain and many English speaking countries, but usage only dates from the nineteenth century and in North America the older ‘Mother Goose Rhymes’ is still often used.

The oldest children's songs of which we have records are lullabies, intended to help a child sleep. Lullabies can be found in every human culture. The English term lullaby is thought to come from 'lu, lu' or 'la la' sound made by mothers or nurses to calm children, and 'by by' or 'bye bye', either another lulling sound, or a term for good night. Until the modern era lullabies were usually only recorded incidentally in written sources.

It has been argued that nursery rhymes set to music aid in a child's development. Research also supports the assertion that music and rhyme increase a child's ability in spatial reasoning which leads to greater success in school in the subjects of mathematics and science.

You can find a special link with lyrics, music, and videos containing nursery rhymes by clicking on the subject.

Kids come in all languages: reading instruction for ESL students

We would like to share with you this amazing book that could give us ideas of how to teach our students the English language. You just have to click on the subject so you can download the book.

Hope you like it!

Teaching the Alphabet

Teaching the alphabet to kids can be as easy!

The first place that you want to start, especially if your kids are new to English, is with the ABC song. Sing it as often as possible. Sing it whenever you have a free moment--when waiting for lunch, or the toilet, or other students to finish washing their hands--anytime! This is one of the easiest songs for kids to learn and it will soon become one of their favorites. They are very proud when they can sing this song and they will start to ask to be able to sing it.

When the kids know the ABC song, start pointing to each letter when you sing the song. They'll start to figure out that each letter name has a visual letter that goes along with it. Once your kids know the song, and have understood the concept that there is a visual representation that goes along with the name, you can move on to more advanced work. This is the letter learning process that I have gone through with my kids when teaching the alphabet.

I hope that these ideas help get you started on the right track for teaching the alphabet to kids. As always, make any adjustments that you need to keep your kids interested.

You'll find an example of a video that can help you with the song. Good luck! :)

English as a Second Language Students

Teaching ESL to children is challenging but also very rewarding. Before I walk into a class of 10-year olds, I take a deep breath. Children have no attention span AT ALL, and so I tell myself to slow right down before I start. Teaching children requires patience and a sense of fun and playfulness. Even though it seems obvious, a common mistake is to think that children are simply 'short adults!' This is sure to get you off on the wrong foot!

Here are some tips for teaching ESL to children:

1. Involve children in hands-on activities. Children's minds are incredibly open and they learn by absorbing ideas and concepts directly. Children need to be actively involved. Get students up and out of their chairs and moving around. Sing songs, and play games.

2. Avoid talking for long periods of time. I find that the energy level of the classroom drops lower and lower. Explain an activity quickly and then go to it. Keep the energy moving! If your planned activity is a flop, move on. Keep a few extra activities handy for this purpose. Children need lots of stimulation all the time.

3. Children learn by interacting with each other and with the teacher. Try to talk to each child individually each class. Whenever possible, have children working in groups and in pairs.

4. Review, Review, Review. New information is absorbed and has meaning when it is related to information students have already learned. Quickly review new concepts at the beginning of each class.

5. Encourage students to correct themselves and other students. Self correction or self-regulation is an important part of learning. Students should be encouraged to ask, "How am I doing?" and "Am I doing this right?" in an open and non-judgmental environment. Children raised in authoritative cultures may need additional re-inforcement.

6. Use what is learned in different contexts. The more contexts used the better, and the more concrete and 'real life' the contexts the better. Make it real for students by talking about them and their lives.

7. Praise, Praise, Praise. Encourage and build students up in a natural way. Learning occurs when students are motivated and feel good about themselves.

Looking back on my years of teaching, the children's classes took a bit of getting used to, but were the most memorable and fun!