Meg English - Bright and Fun Teacher Resources : ELL

Showing posts with label ELL. Show all posts

Wednesday, 27 April 2016

Fun Ways to Teach Vocabulary - Rooms and Furniture

One thing I found learning other languages was just how many words you need just to function - just to live with people, navigate around a room, do the shopping. And just how hard it is to learn a long, disjointed list of words, especially for kids.

As a teacher of English, I know just how necessary and yet potentially boring vocabulary lessons can be, so I have made a set of room cards in a cartoon style to make learning this sort of vocabulary fun, relevant and engaging.

I have one set of all rooms and common furniture with labels, and one without to test them.

I made the set resizable so they can be made into posters, worksheets or flashcards. Cool, huh? Great for ESL or early literacy/ reading recovery. More information and to buy them can be found here:

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Cartoon-Rooms-Vocab-Cards-and-Posters-2463383

Pretty darn good for $5 I think! (:

Tuesday, 16 February 2016

The Hamburger Hut - Tactile Lesson to Target Spoken Skills

The Make-Your-Own Hamburger Hut, gives your students have the opportunity to make their own hamburgers out of the ingredients given. You get all the pieces separately and can put together your own hamburgers, as you like them (or ask someone else to, in order to get confidence in ordering, expressing opinions and asking questions).

It's great for both ESL / TESOL learners and early learners. You can cut out and laminate the pieces so that they can be reused again and again. It really engages students in a physical task. They can also be put onto a smartboard and moved around.

This can used to teach all sorts of lessons:

* Expressing likes and dislikes (’I like cheese’, ‘I don’t like beetroot on my hamburger’);
* Expressing opinion (‘I don’t think it is right to eat meat’ ‘I think egg on hamburgers is weird’);
* Food vocabulary (lettuce, tomatoes, cheese etc);
* Asking questions (‘Do you like cheese?’ ‘Would you like mustard on your hamburger?’);
* Colours;
* Discussion of cultural differences and food preferences;
* Countable and uncountable nouns (much vs many) (‘I don’t like much mustard’ ‘I only want a few pickles’);
* Prepositions of place (under, over, on top of, on etc) ;
* Superlatives and comparatives (bigger than, the biggest etc); and
* Ordering food target language (‘I would like..’ ‘Can I please have…’ etc).

Students can do the activities all together or can break into groups. Consider having one student taking orders, one making the hamburgers and other people ordering (then swap)! (:

They have been hand-drawn in a fun cartoon style to make them more appealing. And yes, I am Australian, so I have included pineapple and beetroot, but that's something else you can discuss with your students! (;

I had a lot of fun with its prototype with ESL students in Japan. There were lots of giggles and more importantly, something to bring out those confident speaking skills.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/The-Hamburger-Hut-Tactile-Fun-to-Target-Speaking-Skills-2011587

Preposition of Place Flashcards

These are fun cards to teach where things are. The set has 9 flashcards showing prepositions of place (on, under, behind, next to, in front of, in, out and around).

Each card has a cute illustration showing the target preposition, the word by itself and a sentence describing the scene.

These can be used for younger students or as an ESL (TESOL) resource. It is an especially good resource for reading recovery.

Flashcards are a fun and engaging way to teach. The pictures involve the students in looking at and describing the scene and the language targets are broken down into an easy to understand format. They also brighten up your classroom, and are useful in language assessments or display lessons.

I made myself a handrawn version of these when I was teaching TESOL many years ago. I found that they were a good way to really see where a younger student was at, as I could test vocabulary and sentence structure using the images only (written and all verbal), without using a written test (much more fun, age appropriate and far less scary). As few children knew all of the prepositions, you could uncover the writing and go through the sentences with them. This way they picked up something quickly so had a sense of achievement. The students were engaged and the parents felt like it was worthwhile (: In this way, you can engage speaking skills along with written skills, rather than secondary to them.