Recycling a song - and avoiding having to sing?!

What do you do with a young learners song, after they've sung it once?

Milk it to death!

An idea sprang to mind - Adobe Spark Video - as a way to recap/replay/rework one of the songs from our Young Learners' text book (Everybody Up Starter from OUP). Chicken, fish, rice & beans works very nicely as a back and forth (question and response), and it's easy to switch parts half way through. So we did. I like this exercise as it gets the students to read the words - a catchy tune helps them bounce it along with proper intonation as well.

The #Edtech a bit too much for my little learners to manage alone, but they were very quickly directing me what to do - how to spell things, which icons or images they wanted, and counting each other in to record their panels, and putting panels in the correct order. Then they decided when they'd recorded their voices to their own satisfaction (after practice goes) and completed with big smiles.

Adobe Spark Video is great for this kind of 'challenge', as the sections are ideally short, and you can re-record until you are happy to move on. Looks great, seamless transitions, and piece of cake to do on your iPhone or iPad.

Your welcome!

Buy one, get one free - boardgames flipping the classroom

For us adults, having to go grocery shopping can be a bit of a tiresome chore. If you are forgetful like me, you will have to make a list, check it twice and then remember to take it with you when you go to the shops! At Luna we have turned grocery shopping into a fun activity which the students can enjoy with the help of the "Shopping List" game. If only I could do my grocery shopping in the classroom!

Shopping carts and shopping lists

The students get their own shopping list, made up of 8 different items, and their own shopping trolley, which they must fill up with the items on their shopping list. There are cards, which are placed face down, for each of the food items found on the shopping lists and it is the students' job to find and name all the food items on their shopping list. It's a great way of introducing new food items that the students unfamiliar with, as well as allowing them to recycle language they have encountered in their textbooks.

Is it on the shopping list?

We all know that food vocabulary is an integral part of learning any language, especially if you don't want to unwittingly order a plateful of tripe or a bowl full of fish eyes at a restaurant! The great thing about the "shopping list" game is that as well as building the students' vocabulary of food items, alongside incorporating the target language you have been teaching in the classroom. You can elicit what the students' favourite foods are, what they could make from the items on their shopping lists or even get the students to make shopping lists of their own! Another way to implement this game in the classroom is to set up a role play activity where the students take on the roles of a cashier and a customer. So why not give the game a go in your classroom with your very own twist!

No it isn't!

Only if the students would get this excited when their parents take them grocery shopping!

Damian Gowland

Enunciate those important plosives, please, publishers!

Thursday is singing day - Jim's class in the afternoon really enjoys belting out a tune, even with almost no practice. Very quick ears and have a knack of coping with lyrics - the artwork in Everybody Up lends itself to this nicely.

For once I will be picky with Everybody Up as a text though, as I realised (the way the children copied) the audio is weak on something I think should be over emphasised - 'more oomph' was something I got laughed at for saying during my CELTA course way back when - that DON'T needs extra weight to convey the negative meaning of the utterance, and that the /t/ sound on the end of it is vital...instead there's a pretty lame "I donelai ........" which is meaningless. It might be construed as elegant ellision, but the message is hidden & therefore counter productive. OUP, you can do better on this one!

You can hear my guys putting a bit more gusto into their final plosives!

We ended up with a class invasion, as the next class arrived early and wanted to see what the fun was all about; we were missing our gate keeper Yukari downstairs (our son Ceilidh is unwell again). I was delighted the younger ones trumped their older mates in a game of I Spy - they started at the age of 2.5 with Luna and have been absorbing vocabulary voraciously ever since! No harm in letting students know that the competition is catching up quickly :)

Dangerous DINING

I thought that Fugu is a dangerous fish but I think it tastes very nice! I have never eaten Fugu so I want to eat it very much! 

Fugu is a poisonous puffer fish. The poisonous parts of the fugu are the heart and gills. Chef can not serve a fugu if he or she doesn't have a license.

After world war 2 , there were many very hungry Japanese people and some looked for food in restaurant trash that was outside on the street. When they cooked and ate the pieces of  fugu, they got sick or died.     

At the Tokyo University of fisheries are trying to make an anti-toxin, which is a medicine that will stop people from dying because of fugu poisoning. 

Tomoro

A peep inside Japanese fridges

Whose fridge is this?

Toru says: In my fridge there are some tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers, oranges. There is some milk, yoghurt, pudding.

There isn't any beer, pizza. There aren't any french fries, hamburger(s).

Takuro says: There is a left-over curry. There are some eggs, tomatoes. There is some Pepsi, aquarius, mayonnaise, beer, balsamico, ginger, wasabi.

There aren't any hamburgers, cereals, noodles, bananas. There isn't any cola.