Interactive Digital Resources Series, Part 4: St Patrick’s Day

As an Irish person working abroad, I am of course far more excited for St Patrick’s Day than I ever was when I lived in Ireland. St Patrick’s Day falls on the 17th of March, which is a Saturday, but in the lead up to the day I plan on doing a themed lesson to celebrate with my kids.

I will read them a story about Ireland, play some flashcard games with them (I plan on doing a post about different games you can play with flashcards soon!), sing this song, and do a crossword that I created using Discovery Education’s puzzlemaker.

As my students are still quite young (6 years old), I plan on doing this corssword as a group activity, and working through it together on the whiteboard, to ensure that everyone understands the task and can follow along. I also find that occassionaly doing activities that are intended to be solitary as a group activity works well, especially if the idea of the activity is a new one for my class. Done as a group activity, this corssword will help the children develop their speaking skills and language recall, as well as their ability to read English (I will have them read each clue out loud).

You can find the crossword that I generated here:

St Patrick’s Day Crossword

Interactive Digital Resouces Series, Part 3: Family

Part 3 of my Interactive Digital Resources series focuses on the family, an essential part of a young learner’s vocabulary.

Before I introduce the digital resources that I used for this lesson, however, I will say that it is so important to teach children that all families are different. Just like people, they can come in all shapes and sizes. Some children who come from non- “traditional” families are incredibly sensitive about this topic, and as a teacher it is important to be aware of this. I always introduce the topic of the family by talking about what constitutes a family – a mom and a dad, a mom or a dad, two moms or two dads, grandparents, etc. And if you sense that a child is uncomfortable talking about who is in their family, don’t press the issue in front of rest of the class.

With that said, the language of the family is foundational vocab for an English-learner, and it is important that they know how to recognize and speak the names of those who belong to theirs.

I introduced the topic of family to my students by talking about the family tree, using my own family as an example. I passed around a couple of photos and as I was verbally describing my family, I was inputting the names of family members (brother, sister, mother, etc) into this online family tree building tool (which I was projecting onto the whiteboard), so that my students could understand the vocabulary better. I then gave them the opportunity to draw their own family tree, using this worksheet. At the back of the paper (don’t be a waster! Always use both sides of any paper that you distribute ;)) I had them write “In my family there are [insert no. of family members] people: my [insert names of family members]. I have [insert no. of siblings] brothers and sisters. I love my family”, as a way to practice their English writing skills.

As a family vocab review, I used this online tool to play a game of Hangman using the interactive whiteboard. It went down a treat with my students. Hangman is a really great way of working on their speaking and pronunciation skills. I get my students to sound out the letters according to the Jolly Phonics sounds, as that is what they are currently learning with their other teacher.

I hope this post gave you some inspiration for your own family-themed lesson activities!

Interactive Digital Resources Series, Part 2: Food

In the words of Popeye: “Everything is Food, Food, Food”. I mean, who wouldn’t gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today? But I digress.

Learning and being familiar with the language of food is an important part of learning a language. How sad would it be to visit a new country and realise you don’t know how to order your favorite dish? I’m making sure that my students will never encounter this tragedy if they ever visit an English-speaking country.

Kids love to talk about food (who doesn’t?!). I did not need to ask my students twice what there favorite food was before a dozen hands shot up.

There are countless fun activities that you can do to teach children the language of food. One such activity that I did with my students was to play bingo to review the vocab that we had previously covered in class. I created my own bingo cards using this wonderful Bingo Card Generator.

To play bingo, I distributed a card to each students. Then, once I had explained the rules of bingo, I began holding up flashcards of the food vocab that we had been learning, clearly calling out the name of each image. Kids love bingo, and I love to play it with them as it really levels the playing-field and engages everyone – from the more advanced student to those who are struggling that little bit more than others. It is also a great way for my students to work on their listening and reading skills.

You can find a copy of the bingo cards that I used attached here:

Food Bingo

Interactive Digital Resources Series, Part 1: Valentine’s Day

Hello and welcome to a new four part series on my blog. This series will show you how you can easily incorporate interactive digital resources into your lesson plans. In each post I will be highlighting at least one resource that I have used in my classroom. I will also be sharing the theme of each lesson that I used each resource for, but it can really be applied to any topic.

As February is drawing to a close and this cold, cold winter is nearing its end, we can finally start looking forward to spring. For me, the real precursor to the first warm spring breeze is Valentine’s Day. Whilst there still might be a chill in the air, there is no better way than to warm up a classroom of cold kids with a lesson on love.

This was a really fun lesson for me to prepare. I always find lesson plans that centre around special days go down well with my class, as it changes up the routine, and they know that the lesson nearly always finshes with a fun game or activity! Plus I got to teach my students’ one of my favourite childhood songs: Skinnamarinky  (who else remembers the Elephant Show?). My students loved this almost as much as I did.

For the Valentine’s Day themed activity for this lesson, I created my own wordsearch using Discovery Education’s  wordsearch maker. On the wordsearch I used vocab that I had introduced at the start of my lesson using these flashcards.

Wordsearches are a great way to close of a lesson, as I find they really absorb the students’ attention, and they are less likely to become distracted and rowdy as they realise that the lesson is drawing to a close. They are also a good way for students to develop their reading skills.

You can find the wordsearch that I used attached to the bottom of this post, or you can create your own by following this link.

Valentine’s Day Wordsearch