Friday, January 30, 2015

Giving directions - using a poster

You can find numerous ways on how to use posters. For example for this lesson our aim was to practice giving directions and following directions. Students worked in pairs. One student gave the directions and the other moved on the map / poster. Then they switched roles.
They used the key vocabulary and phrases:
Go straight
go down the street
turn left
turn right
go past
it's on your left
it's on your right
next to
between
in front of
behind















Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Using an interactive poster (DIY) - vocabulary revision


Today was our first English class after a three -week winter break. It's always good to jog the students' memory of what has been learnt recently before moving to something new.
In that regard I decided to use an interactive poster I made myself. It's nothing special really I just used a flip chart paper and draw a house. I draw the rooms with a certain piece of furniture that would be used as a hint to guess the name of the room.

I teach in a mixed class. That means that second grade students and third grade students have English at the same time even though a different syllabus is used for each. So this was a good way to involve all the students.
Here's how we used the poster and just a glimpse at all the other activities we did in class.

1. Put the poster on the board. Prepare pieces of paper with the names of the rooms of the house. Ask each student to take a piece of paper, come to the board and put the word in the correct room. Then ask students to say the word and practice pronunciation.




2. Prepare some pictures of furniture and write the name of the furniture on pieces of paper. Divide students into two groups. Ask the students from the first group to choose a card with a picture on it and stand on different places around the classroom. Ask the second group of students to choose from the cards with the words and then tell them to find their pair. They should match the word with the picture. ( This is a good activity when you teach young learners because it includes movement and this is what they enjoy the most :) )




3. To revise family members vocabulary plus the rooms in the house I asked the students to do a similar activity as the one above. Some of the students got pictures with rooms in the house and some of the students got pictures with family members. They followed my instructions and went " in the room" I told them. Example : Mother is in the living room. / Brother is in the kitchen. Once they were in the correct room their task was to repeat the sentence I told them before and talk about the family members and their location.




4. For the last activity I told the students to take one picture with furniture on it and put it in the correct room. Afterwards the students choose the words and put them on the correct picture.
Example: There is a table in the kitchen. / There is a carpet in the living room.




In the end we got a very colourful poster and a bit untidy house :)
And most importantly we had fun while revising vocabulary.


Remember : Both learning and teaching English can be fun! :)

Monday, January 5, 2015

Christmas gathering

This year for Christmas we organised a Christmas gathering. The students performed one short play in Macedonian and one in English. A group of students sang some traditional Christmas carols in both languages and the parents contributed to the event by providing home made food. The guest of honour was the British ambassador to Macedonia  Charles Edmund Garrett with his family.














English corner in the classroom

It's always important to display the work of the students so that the others can see them and the students themselves can feel proud of their work.
However, during the holidays we tend to make the English corner a bit more interesting and funny.
This is what we did this year for Christmas.
I used photos of the kids and a paper doll template of Santa and Mrs. Santa :)