Dear Zoo

Dear Zoo is a storybook for young children by Rod Campbell. I find it very useful to teach zoo animals as well as adjectives. I have bought it during this school year and I started to work on it one month ago. I have prepared a teaching unit based on it and I’m very happy with the results obtained in the classroom.

I made some cards with the story animals (elephant, giraffe, lion, monkey, snake, camel, frog) to teach them to my 5-year-old students.

The unit sketch can be something like this:

In the first lesson I teach those animals by listen, listen and repeat, listen and touch activities, … In one of the activities I tell the children that the classroom is a zoo and there are many animals inside, I will call out animals and they will have to imitate them with sounds, gestures and movements; apart from the animals seen in this lesson, I will call out others already learnt.

In the second lesson, I will reinforce the vocabulary about animals through some drills and a miming activity (where each child has to imitate the animal I whisper and the rest has to guess it). Once they know it, I will start with the adjectives related to each of the animals (big-elephant, fierce-lion, tall-giraffe, scary-snake, naughty-monkey, grumpy-camel, jumpy-frog), I try to elude from them the adjectives in their mother tongue and I translate the word into English. Then, when I show the animal card we say the adjective and we make the gesture. We also play the zoo game to review animals.

The goal of the third lesson is to reinforce the vocabulary, animals and adjectives, through different activities, games and worksheets. We also take photos representing the adjectives so then, we will use them as flashcards. At the end of this lesson, to create expectation I show the storybook to children, we read the title, we make guesses about the content and we name the animals in the book cover.

In the next stage and lesson, I read the story at the same time that they lift the flaps and discover the animal in each box. At the end, they have to guess the animal the zoo sends. I ask them about their opinion and we retell the story, this time they participate by saying the animals and the adjectives. We also start to make a big poster about the story by colouring and cutting the pictures on the next pdf file.

http://www.kizclub.com/storypatterns/dearzoo.pdf

Finally, in the following lessons, after telling the story several times, they are able to do it by themselves.

What's the time Mr. Wolf?

Time to talk about games, in this article I will talk about a funny game I use with younger students in the playground. It's called What's the time Mr Wolf?, and it's the twin of our Spanish game 'Escondite inglés'; the similarity between both games implies children's knowledge and recognition, as well as, a significant relation between native children's games and their Spanish games. That relation is very important in the sense that students will feel confident because they can guess the rules of the game and play without the need of having a good level of English.

This game is very useful to practice numbers and to introduce the time in English. This video shows you how to play.

Playground Games:

How To Play 'What's The Time Mr Wolf'

If you've got a big classroom you can prepare a place free of chairs and tables to play. The first time I taught the game I did it in the classroom, I prepared a wolf picture and a paper plate clock, and I stuck them on a wall, I played the role of the wolf and I moved the clock hands showing the time I called out, when I said dinnertime I did the gesture of being hungry and I chased them. They really enjoyed it and all of them were anxious for playing the wolf.

We are fruits!

Last year I had to teach a small group of 4-5 year-old students in order to help the Infant Education teacher. I spent two hours every day with them, teaching reading, writing and numeracy.

I love small children and I love when they enjoy learning so, when I am with young students I usually act like a clown, doing things so that they can laugh and feel more motivated. A role I used to play with them was that of a CONFUSED teacher who had problems to remember names and letters.

Every day children had to do some worksheets in the classroom and I had to write their names on them to avoid mixing one's with other's. As it was a boring task and they had to wait until I had finished, I played my "confused" role, I usually called them fruit or vegetable names to make them laugh. At the same time, they offered me help to find more names for other students.

Taking into account that, I decided to incorporate the same idea to the English lessons so that my students could learn the fruits in the second language.

I prepared some fruit necklaces, using fruit pictures attached to a string, I gave one to each of my students: an apple, a strawberry, a cherry, a watermelon, a melon, an orange and a bunch of grapes. I told them that I had forgotten their names and I renamed them with the fruit names. Students only had to learn their piece of fruit, it was an easy task and it didn't involve any kind of learning imposition, in fact, that wasn't the aim of lesson, in that moment we were working on the tale of Pretty Ritty.

After two lessons using the fake names and the necklaces everybody knew the fruit names. I told them that I would give them a prize if they were able to remember the rest of the fruits. All of them won the prize.

If someone wants to make the necklaces, try the following links where you can find nice pictures:

http://www.supercoloring.com/pages/category/fruits/

http://www.coloring-pages-kids.com/coloring-pages/nature-food-coloring-pages/fruits-coloring-pages/fruits-coloring-pages-images/fruit-coloring-page-02.php

Useful resources

I was looking for some Sesame Street colouring numbers because a teacher had seen them in another school and she couldn't find them anywhere on the net when I found this great page with lots of resources for our lessons: crafts, colouring pages, videos and so on.

I just wanted to share it:

http://www.sproutonline.com/sprout/home/

Two little dicky birds

One of my first lesson plans in Infant Education is based on the finger rhyme "Two little dicky birds". Although it seems too complicated, children learn it quickly, and they enjoy the game with the fingers. This rhyme has got a small plot, it's short and it has got three important elements in teaching young children: repetition, rhythm and intonation.

Peter and Paul, the characters, are two paper birds that live in my cloth bag inside the magic box. Each time I want to introduce new vocabulary, I make my students guess it, I hide the flash cards or the objects in the cloth bag and I try them to elicit it giving them clues, they have to make their guesses in their mother tongue, I repeat what they say in English.

Then, bit a bit, I show them my birds and I explain the rhyme story. Their names are Peter and Paul, they are two, they are very small, they are sitting on a wall... To explain it, I draw a wall on the board and I stick my birds on it, I move the birds taking into account what the rhyme says. Once they know the plot, I start to say the rhyme using my fingers, and then, I ask them to do the finger actions with me. The first day, my pupils  are usually able to do the finger actions by themselves and after a few lessons they are able to say it without my help.

After each lesson, students make some table activities related to the rhyme: colouring Peter and Paul, making the puppets, drawing the wall... These activities are very useful and they help children speak in English at home, they see their work and they can show it to their parents imitating what the teacher does.

These are my students saying the rhyme:

This is the template you can use to make two finger puppets (Peter and Paul).

Recently, I've learned in a teachers' course in Norwich a new version. In the video, it's possible to see Jamie Keddie (a famous ESL writer) with other teachers singing the rhyme. Jamie has got two bird drawings stuck  on his nails, and when Peter and Paul fly away, he changes the fingers and we can't see the birds. Children love it because they think that the teacher is a magician that makes Peter and Paul disappear and appear again.

You can watch other videos about the rhyme clicking on the links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opIWKEmx09A&feature=fvw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3z824bjI0g

Very young learners

Teaching very young learners (between 3 and 5 years old) is a very difficult task that demands a lot of energy from the teacher. Kids at this age are very dynamic and active and their need of movement must be applied to any activity designed for them.

I love teaching very young learners because they have fun using the foreign language and they don't feel embarrassed about it (as older ones do). They can learn many words and useful chunks of language from songs and stories that later, in higher levels, will help them in the deeper study of grammar and composition rules.

I don't use any coursebook at these levels but I get ideas from them to prepare my own materials. I use a magic box (a big box well decorated) where I keep all the things I need in each lesson: the pet, a small ball, the CDs I need, a surprise bag (where I introduce the vocabulary I want them to learn), the things already learnt (they can be flashcards or realia) and worksheets for the lesson. The pet sleeps in the magic box and, from time to time, when we go on holidays it gets lost around the classroom. Children love the magic box and they always want to see what's inside. The magic box whets their curiosity and increases their opportunity to learn.

One of the main points when teaching very young learners is establishing routines. When children know what to expect and what to do they feel more confident and free to participate in the activities proposed. I have posted in this article a list with the routines I use in my English lessons. You can see that they have different levels of movement to improve students' attention. In the future, I will post some videos about my routines. Most of them are related to a chant or a song.


Table time (they usually are working on their tables when I arrive).

• All aboard (they catch the train)


Circle time

• Sitting down in a circle.

• Saying hello.

• Waking up (the pet is sleeping in the magic box )

• Asking how we are.

• Taking the register.

• Revision

• Introduction of vocabulary, songs or stories

• Playing games to practice

• Saying bye bye to our pet.

• All aboard.


Table time

• Sitting down.

• Worksheet

• Tidying up.