Meg English - Bright and Fun Teacher Resources : french

Wednesday, 29 June 2016

Clothes Vocabulary Cards

When I was overseas teaching English, one of the resources that I needed most often but was hard to find, was flashcards for clothes. Students not only needed to learn the vocabulary, but the adjectives to describe them (stripey, spotty or polka-dotted, floral, plain etc) and the order to use those adjectives (e.g. 'She was wearing a blue, floral dress.')

I never did find a good set, so I have made my own. This one is in Australian English, (as the possibility of finding one of those was even rarer!), though I will soon add a British English and American English version to localise the language (so we don't argue what a thong is (; )

There are some pictures available online as posters, but they always seem to be made out of 1980's (non-matching) clipart or hand drawn black and white drawings from when men wore their pants around their bustline. So I cut mine out of cute paper to give them a fun, bright, quirky look and feel, and so they'd have a bit more heart.

They are available at: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Clothes-Flashcards-Australian-English-2616420

I'm also translating these into world languages - so far I have French: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Vetements-French-Clothes-Vocabulary-Flashcards-2616453

Tuesday, 16 February 2016

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.