Fun Ways to Teach Everyday Vocabulary

One thing I found teaching English overseas was that it can be hard to find interesting ways to teach vocabulary, especially for kids. When included in textbooks, pictures were usually black and white and quite dark. Sometimes students would just sit and try and learn vocabulary from dictionaries, which obviously doesn't have a lot of relevance as well as being super boring!

So, I have made two resources that are intended to go hand-in-hand. The first is a set of flashcards which shows everyday objects, which has been featured in this blog before.

 Each target word is drawn as a bright cartoon, shown on one card with the word and another by itself. https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Everyday-Objects-Noun-Vocabulary-Flashcards-ESL-LOTE-Literacy-2370229.



To go alongside this, I have also made resizeable images of cartoon-style rooms. Each room, (and the outside of a house), comes in a pair - one image by itself and one labelled with the words for that piece of furniture, furnishing or object in English. more languages will follow and I'll certainly take requests on that!

They also make awesome posters to decorate the classroom with or in your kit as an English language tutor (always looks impressive!). They are also a great stimulus for assessing students. They are bright and have a professional finish, as well as being bright and engaging (who doesn't love cartoons! (; )

These rooms can be found at https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Cartoon-Rooms-Vocab-Cards-and-Posters-2463383.

As these two resources complement each other so well, I'm going to bundle them as well, so check out my store for this and future ESL/ English/ reading recovery resources (:

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.

Copyright 2015 Meg. English

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