This blog was designed specially for English Teachers working in Kindergarten and Primary Schools and its aim is to share materials and exchange ideas about learning and teaching. All materials posted on this blog are for educational purposes only. Hope you find it interesting.
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22 February, 2011

How to make a short mini book

Inspire yourselves and your children with reading. A simple but with many variables mini book! Enjoy

21 February, 2011

Pooh & Friends - present continuous

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Parts Of A Book

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Teaching Your Child To Love Reading

Every parent wants his or her child to learn to read. But, more importantly, they want them to learn to love reading. Without reading a person can not do much of anything. If a person does not like to read, they will not read even what is essential for every day life. The child that learns to love reading will enjoy a life filled with wonder and continued growth academically and personally.


It is not always easy to get a child to like to read. Some take to books naturally, but others will do just about anything to avoid them. This can be discouraging for parents and teachers a like. However, there are things we can all do to try and help each young person fall in love with the written word.


The first and most important thing an adult must do is to be an avid reader. If the adults in a child's life do not read and do not allow the child to see them reading, the child will have difficulty making the connection between reading and enjoyment. Read everything. Novels, biographies, non-fiction pieces, magazines, newspapers, the backs of cereal boxes, are just some examples of the things you can read in the presence of your child.


Let them see you responding to what you are reading. If it is a funny story, laugh and tell your child you enjoyed it because it made you laugh. If it is a sad news report, act sad and explain why you are sad to your child. If is a how-to article that you have learned from, let your child know you just learned something.

Make a special time that you and your child read together. At least four times a week, get comfortable in a favorite spot with your child. Let him or her pick out what they want to read with you. Talk about what you are reading and discuss any pictures or points of interest that come up while you are reading. By talking about it and asking him or her questions about how he or she feels about what you are reading you are telling your child that this is important and you value his or her opinion. This kind of positive reinforcement will create warm and comfortable memories that elicit a love of reading.

Make reading fun. Use funny voices while reading a story. Encourage your child to use funny voices. Both of you can role-play the characters of the story, pretending to be part of the story. The more you play with your child, the more excited he or she will be about learning anything.
When your child asks you a factual question, tell him or her you don't know, but you'll help him or her look it up. This gives you the opportunity to instill in your child the invaluable skill that reading really is. It gives you both time together to talk and discuss any information that may be important to one or both of you. By creating this kind of intimacy with your child you are allowing him or her to feel safe in coming to you with his or her questions. You will also be showing your child that reading is not only enjoyable, but purposeful as well.

When you want to give a reward for something your child has accomplished let it be reading time with you. Or, even let it be a trip to a bookstore to buy a new book. Picking out a new book is always exciting and this will give you a chance to observe the kinds of things your child wants to read. Then take the book home and read it together.

Make sure your child has his or her own library card. Picking out books from the library is just as exciting as picking books out at a bookstore. Except that your child can usually pick out a lot more from the library than the bookstore. Being a member of the library usually means access to storytellers and reading programs as well. These are both great motivators for creating a love of reading in children.

Another great motivator is stuffed animals or dolls that represent characters from favorite storybooks. When you have one of these toys you can use them to help you read the story to your child. And, your child can use them to help him or her read it to you. This makes reading fun and gives your child the opportunity to exercise his or her creativity.

Make your own puppets to use when reading. Socks and mittens are wonderful things to make puppets. These puppets can help your child get excited about reading. Again, the creativity in your child will come out as he or she is using the puppet to read a story to you. This will make the story even more exciting and enjoyable for you both.

Teach your child to treat his or her books with loving care. Explain that it is important not to bend the binding of a book or leave it laying open face down. Let them know that you care what happens to the reading material in your house. Show them how not to write on top of books or inside of books in order to keep the nice and help them last for a long time. Make sure you treat your own books in the same manner you expect your child to keep his or her books. When a child learns to respect his or her books, he or she will also learn to respect what is inside the book.

No matter how you go about teaching your child to love reading, keep in mind one very important thing. Never use reading as a punishment. Doing this will link negativity to reading and create a resistance to reading in your child. Keeping your child's reading experiences positive and fun is important in order that your child views reading as an enjoyable pastime.

20 February, 2011

Circle Song

Those were my last year students performing Circle. They created the coreography and they did it great!
Circle Song

15 February, 2011

Story Telling

Returning to children's education especially in the initial level or kindergarten, we must take into account the high importance taken by the tales and stories. It is in these moments when we can lead children to repetition, association and identification of characters.

Importantly, irrespective of their characters, the adventure of reading takes the child to deploy implitud his imagination, which will often be influenced and related by colorful pictures.

It is important to take the time to read slowly, give the child time to become familiar and then repeat. When reading is important to pronounce and modular with a conservative exaggeration, remember that the child will imitate.

I will upload here an example of reading and repetition for Kinder 4 and 5.

01 December, 2010

How to Effectively use Games in the Preschool and Elementary ESL Classroom

Organization
The first thing you should do when start teaching a preschool or elementary school ESL class is to figure out how to organize your class. For the younger students you'll want to change your activities every five to ten minutes because they have shorter attention spans.
If you don't change your activities, they'll soon start losing interest. As you get towards the higher elementary
grades, you can expand the time you spend per activity. The best way to gauge this is to pay attention to your
class for the first few days to see what length of time works the best for them. Additionally, try to have
everything ready to go before the students enter the classroom. That way you can go from activity to activity
with minimal downtime.

Expectations
If you notice that your class is getting noisy or rambunctious, it's time to change activities. Kids of this age are active and like to be active; in order to balance out the energy levels in the classroom, alternate between active activities and quiet activities. If you have a large class you will need games that do not degenerate into chaos. This will leave you exhausted and the children ignorant! Also important is that the language in the game
should be well within the grasp of the children. Start simply and increase the difficulty of the language, or
increase the amount of vocabulary in a given game gradually. If you see that the children are hesitating too
much in a game switch to an easier game immediately.

Be careful how you use activities that require fine motor skills - or more importantly pay attention to your
expectations for activities that require fine motor skills. Children in preschool and early elementary are just
learning to write in their own languages. This is not the best time to bog them down with writing in English as well. It is better to spend the bulk of the lesson time on listening and speaking skills for the younger children. As they progress through elementary school, however, you can begin using games and activities that require them to write small amounts.

Variation
You want to make sure your activities appeal to all sorts learning styles, so even when you are using games
to teach grammar you'll want to vary the types of things you expect your students to do. For preschool and early elementary grades, stick to games that use talking, listening, looking and moving. For middle and high
elementary, you can continue to use games that use talking,  listening, looking and moving and add in some games that use writing and reading.

Going along with this same idea, think about what children learn from the easiest. Television commercials are short and catchy and the most memorable are the ones that are repeated often. Keep these characteristics in mind when you are teaching grammar to your students - incorporate these characteristics into your daily activities.

Respect
To make games work for you and your class, be sure to operate your class with the utmost respect - both
to and from students. This includes teaching your students from the very start that you expect respect at all times. This includes giving encouragement and following the rules. That said, you'll need to make sure the rules for all of the games are clear and manageable. When possible, explain the rules in the students' native tongue so that they all know what is expected of them. When there is an environment of respect in the classroom, the students will feel safe enough to participate in the games so that they can get the most educational value out of them.
Towards the end of elementary school, you can start introducing competitive games, but only if the class is
respectful and it shouldn't be the main focus of the game.

Routine
Even if you only have your students for a short  time every week, establishing a routine will help the class go smoothly. Children of this age (preschool through elementary school) thrive on routine and if they know what to expect next, they will be more able to participate in what's going on now. Set up a schedule for the type of activities you'll be doing at any given time throughout the class whether it is a game, story or song or whatever you want to do. Then, when you are planning your class, plug in the appropriate activities to each section of time. You should also leave a little time at the end of the class period to allow the students to clean up and gather their things as well as time for you to recap the class, praise the students and tell them good-bye.You can also designate a "sign" to use to signal to the students when it is time to change activities such as clapping or signing a specific song so that they know it's time to return to the circle, table or desks.

Nurture
Perhaps the most important thing you can do with your students is to nurture them everyday. For each child
in your class, find something you like about him or her and be sure to tell him or her. Be encouraging, patient and kind while playing games and participating in activities and they'll like you as a teacher and a person which will in turn help them get excited about your class and what you have for them to do everyday.

Just by keeping these tips in mind, you'll be able to teach children grammar with ease. You'll be having fun and
they'll be having fun - so much fun, in fact, that they might not even realize they are learning in the process!
Shelley Vernon has helped 1000s of teachers be an  inspiration to their pupils and achieve results 2x as fast.
Improve the effectiveness of your lessons by up to 80%.