How many arms do you have? (We need ten!)

Four students is a very nice number to be working with. Ever noticed how most board games & activities are designed for four players?!

We have heard this song a few times now in class and at home, and have pointed/stabbed numbers on the table. Thought we'd warm ourselves up the other afternoon, and get physical with our numbers from one to ten. The song is one of the delightful tunes found in the Everybody Up (Starter) book from OUP - haven't really come across a bad chant yet in it. What I do like especially about the songs is that they are long enough (and repeat the same verse) that we can change around in the middle ie assume a different 'role' - in this case two new numbers. This does mean children are adapting quickly/being more flexible with the vocabulary, and putting it 'in order' in their heads.Catchy music gives them 'hooks' to hang this all on, and as long as it is a mutual giggle and not a command performance, everyone will try; brave ones might even sing.

I know a lot of inexperienced YL teachers panic about 'losing control'...a class out of control is a nightmare, to be sure. The key I find is to know what you are trying to do and have a number of options handy; plan A might not be suitable if the children arrive tired or hyper; plan B might not work because the cheerleader in the group is absent or 'the monster' is on form; plan C might not work due to missing CD or xyz malfunction. Whatever. The children will give you a break if you give them a break! If they can laugh with you and about themselves, then you can be the focal point of mayhem rather than one of them, which gives you time for transitions/finding the CD track, flashcards etc. Involve them in your problem eg "Where's my book?"

Compare that with "Sit down. Next we are going to talk about animals. This is a cat. Repeat. This is a cat. Do you like cats? Yes I do. You say that. Yes I do. What's this....."

Another thing children love to do is test the teacher (linguistically, rather than emotionally!). Using numbers is important, but one of the easier things for learners to pick up I think. The question bit is what they need to use just as much!  Gang up on the teacher? Even better! After they have exhausted a picture with each other asking eg "How many.......s?" and you are happy with the monitoring you have done gently - challenge the teacher. Make a big deal of being confident, and get the answers wrong :) This will generate plenty of student talk ha ha!

What games do you like to play with numbers? Love to hear about them!

How's the weather? Gales of laughter!

Last Saturday was our monthly workshop for younger learners, when we shift the desks out of the way and do something 'less structured'....as much song, dance & action as we can OR break into the arts & crafts drawers for a project. The workshops are fun, as it is a sign up class and children get to meet new faces from other classes/days - then again we are a local school & sometimes end up with school chums.

No prizes for guessing what the theme was - an oldie, but a goodie! Apologies for the video being a long one, but we had a big giggle and I wanted to share!

Colours & numbers - kids in action

My students know the song quite well, but we haven't "done it this way" before. The Super Simple Song is just as it says on the tin, and very suitable for even very young learners. I wanted to make it a bit harder today, so we had a lot of flashcards on the floor, including numbers (more on that in a mo).

Make sure kids aren't going to dive headfirst at each other to get to the cards first (important!). As they hear the song mention colours, touch the card, then find other things that match around the room (having an interesting/colourful room helps a lot!).

After the song, a sit down - sort of! Leaving the flashcards on the floor we played colour bingo. Again, a bit too easy as most children quickly 'get' colours, so I wrote the word (blue, green etc) slowly on the board, asking the children to read the letters to me as I did so (taking a while to get fluent here). "That's it" = cue to go find the flashcard with the matching word - turn it over to reveal the colour. Get back to the table and do the bingo thing.

The actual bingo became a side show against the fun of reading out the words and finding the same spelling quickly.

We played the same game with numbers, and then placed the cards along the chalk board rail under the same (number) word (out of order). We played a "janken game" in teams - start either end of the row of cards, and read the card/say what is on it. When players meet in the middle, they do 'rock/scissors/paper' to decide a winner - who continues on while the other team replaces their player & start at their beginning again. This can get very noisy but is nice and simple, takes very little prep and is monitored by everyone! Weaker ones can go last & see how to do it/get prompting from team etc. I always answer if kids ask me nicely "What's this, please"!

Once we were done with the bingo game, I played another Super Simple Song "Seven Steps" and asked the children to point to the numbers in time to the music. Harder than you think! Remember, on a bingo card all the numbers are in different sequences...guaranteed giggles and re-starts & pleading to do it again (just what I wanted to do, but it was their idea!)

How do you teach colours & numbers after the first time?

Discover the "Best building in Britain" - and it isn't a pub!

See inside the world's oldest canal tunnel (there are lights now!)

This 5 minute video is fascinating...and not too hard :)

Dudley is in the heart of England, and was at the heart of the Industrial Revolution, as you will hear.

Animal Adventure - our game on Voicethread

In pre-school this morning we had fun playing an animal adventure board game, and I thought you'd like to hear how well our team could play! (They were very patient while Jim messed around on the computer - thank you guys!)

We love Voicethread for this kind of interaction between students, as it gives them a real sense of achievement & ownership. It is also a wonderful chronicle for them to cherish. Real Player also allows you to download/convert to eg iPhone, which is pretty funky!

Would love to hear your comments...add them. Follow this link (couldn't load to Blogger for some reason today).

How to make a Dvolver movie - backstage!

See one, make one, teach one

I thought you'd like to see the backstage activity that takes place in producing a Dvolver 'movie', such as my Monday girls have posted in the last week or so. Last week, only two of them turned up, so I plonked them in front of a PC each, in adjoining rooms, and put a whiteboard in the corridor.

On one PC I showed them "How to" through the pre-writing stages - choosing a scene & weather which was a bit like their holiday story; a scenario that worked - meeting a friend best as it leant itself to a chat; picking two characters (interesting that they all had similar self-images as 'character 1'!)

Little bit of team work goes a long way!

Then the girls asked how to say what they wanted to say, which I wrote on the board. We haven't done past tenses yet so this just sowing the seeds for them. I don't like 'copying, hence the board in an inconvenient place so they had to try & remember 'chunks of words/sentences. Then they switched rooms and became 'character 2', asking a question about their partner's holiday. Naturally, they had to ask each other what they'd just written too! We repeated the switches until we completed three cycles, then they chose their favourite (actually least disliked!) piece of music , added a title and their names, a credits style & bravely pressed 'enter'.

This week, my two 'originals' were the helpers as their classmates turned up, following the same steps but with some bolshie, unenthusiastic spellers! Beauty of this was having to shout over each other to be heard, repeating spellings and seeking confirmation etc. The youngest, quietest one finally found her voice - best speller and got fed up with her partners!

Singtation

My Wednesday boys can be a bit of a handful sometimes, but today we were all literally singing off the same hymn sheet; the Black Cat song from Let's Go 1.

Like most kids, they 'know' colours already; today we were making sure we could read and follow directions to colour objects. That was 'easy', as expected, so the challenge was to listen to a song and pick out the various bits and pieces,then draw/colour what they heard. Lots of shouting and speculation as they demanded to listen again and again, until they 'got it', bit by bit.

This will only work with a strong class that has already been exposed to the language you are trying to pick out; the beauty of a song like this is the relative speed, rhythm & ellision; single words no longer carry equal stress but get joined up. "Black" and "cat" are both familiar words; stick them together naturally and you get 'blackat'; similarly "yellow" and "eyes" gives you 'yelloweyes'. Picking words out from a real context like this really helps students 'want' to reproduce the same sound themselves - and not just singing along. So a drawing/colouring task becomes a challenging listening job, which in turn works on pronunciation and thus speaking.

Another bonus for them with this kind of exercise is that it replicates the part four task in the Cambridge YLE Starters listening test. Now, isn't that nice!?

Computer crap? Not me...VIDEO-tastic!!!

Back on June 8th I posted a blog "I like it". I said I'd try to figure out how to whack video of the lesson up... Well, consider it done! Go have a look and please post a comment telling me how clever I am/what a cool, fun lesson we all had etc?!