Introduction of new vocabulary - Body parts - fourth grade

This is just an idea on how a lesson on introducing body parts can be organized.

Warm - up : Start the lesson by showing some flash cards of body parts to the students. Try to elicit the words from the students and present the new ones by asking them to repeat after you several times. Put the pictures on a wall in the classroom, point to each picture in the order they are arranged and ask students to name the picture. Help them when necessary.
To practice the pronunciation of the words further you can ask students to repeat the word according to its position. For example if the picture "eyes" is on the first place in the line they are going to say the word only once. If for example the picture "shoulders" is fifth in the row then they should say the word five times, and so on. After you have practiced the words enough you can point to the pictures in a mixed order and ask students to name them.

- You can make your own flash cards by simply printing out some coloring pages, color them, use a marker to write the words and you are ready to go :)

Main part: Ask the students to copy the words from the pictures in their notebooks and write down their meaning.

Then put a poster on the board. Make sure to prepare some paper puppets, cut them in separate pieces, distribute the pieces to the students and ask them to come to the board to put the pieces together and solve the puzzle. While putting the pieces together they should name the parts of the body.

Once they have the paper puppets together, give the students cards with the parts of the body. Ask them to come up to the board and put the word next to the correct part of the body.

It's easy as one, two, three and you have your own interactive poster. You can put it on the wall and use it again when you need to revise the parts of the body, or simply students can refer to it when they have a difficulty remembering some of the vocabulary.

End of class activity: It is always important to end the lesson in a  positive note. That's why we prepared a game and a song to wrap things up. It takes some preparation on part of the teacher for the next game, but also you can ask students to make their own cards. Make cards for every student of the body parts you want to include in the game. Give each student one cards and ask them to put the cards on the desk in front of them. I laminated mine and I have used them for several years now.

The game is as follows: The teacher says the words in a quick manner and the students need to show that card. The students who make a mistake are out of the game and you choose a winner in the end- the person who made the least mistakes.

After this you can play the game Simon says, by telling students: Touch your knees, touch your toes....Touch your friend's nose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWsD26om-e4

Finally, play a song for the students. I used a song from the book Let's go, let's begin. Ask students to come to the board in pairs. Make them stand next to each other without looking at each other. They should listen to the song and touch the part of the body they listen. It's a fun way to practice the words and students enjoy when you turn the activity into a competition. At least my students enjoy it. The person who doesn't make a mistake is the winner:)

Paper pockets - plural of nouns

We made some paper pockets and put them on a wall in the classroom. We decided to use them to learn and revise plural of nouns. Give each students some pieces of paper with nouns that form both regular and irregular plural. Ask them to put the noun in the correct pocket and say its plural form. Pay attention on the spelling rules and pronunciation rules that arise when forming the plural forms of the nouns.

You can call these vocabulary banks. The idea is that you add words in the pockets from time to time. It is a good thing that they are displayed in the classroom and students can use them when they are not sure about the plural of some nouns. Also, you can enrich the collection in each group by adding new words every now and then. You can also do this with verbs in different tenses or vocabulary categories, positive and negative adjectives etc.

Jobs vocabulary - revision

Start the lesson by showing some flash cards with jobs. To make it more amusing you can use a book to hide the picture then quickly just show the card and hide it again and let students try to guess the words.

Then for the next activity ask students to stand in a circle and make sure there is enough space in the middle. Tell them that they are going to listen to a song. Give them pieces of papers with the lyrics of the song and ask them to arrange the song on the floor according to what they hear. Here is a link to the song I used:

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/songs/people-work

The teacher needs to make the pieces of paper with the words from the song before the lesson, it takes some time but you can use the same pieces of paper with other classes too.

You can play the song as many times as you think it is necessary. Ask students to sing the song along with you and read the lyrics from the cards on the floor. Additionally you can do the activities from the site connected to the song.

Or, you can play a video to the students and ask them to write down all the professions they see in the video. This video was used in our lesson, and only the first 44 seconds of it until they start showing the words for each job.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw6RBvUmayA

After they watch the video you can check the words and ask them to make definitions for each job.

To make sure they know all of the words you can prepare a poster with sentences / definitions that refer to each profession and give the students cards with the names of the jobs. Ask students to come to the board and put the words next to the correct sentence.

Domestic animals - presentation of new vocabulary

This is a lesson in the second grade. The lesson aim is presenting the vocabulary for domestic animals.

You can start the lesson by presenting the target vocabulary. For this activity you can make some paper plate animals. Since visual is crucial for young learners, making these types of learning materials can help a lot in achieving the goal of the lesson. You can browse on the Internet and get endless ideas on paper plate animals. Show the animals to the students and ask them to repeat after you several times. Then put the animals in a line on the board, point to the animals and ask students to repeat after you and then ask them to say the words on their own.

For the next activity you can use some flash cards. Put them on the board and ask students to come out in pairs. Give them paper balls and ask them to try and hit the animal they hear. The teacher says the animal and the two students throw the paper ball at the same time. The student who hits the correct animal or hits closer gets one point.

To practice pronunciation of the new words you can print some pictures of the animals you intend to teach on this lesson. Make sure to put a number next to each animal. Put the pictures on the floor, Ask the students to stand in a circle around the pictures. You can use the same paper balls from the previous activity. Ask students to throw the ball and see where it stops. They should say the name of the animal as many times as the written number on that picture. Make sure to help them out with the words and the pronunciation in case some of the students find it too difficult.

For the next activity you can ask students to watch a video. Their task is to watch the video, listen and repeat the words and try to remember which animals they see on the video. After they watch it give them a handout with some pictures of animals. Their task is to circle the animals from the video. After they finish with the task revise the words and check their answers. This is the link from the video I used but of course you can find many more on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Izl0vz4Km7w

To extend the activity you can prepare small strips of paper with the names of the animals and ask students to glue the words under the correct picture.

For the last activity you can use the song Old McDonald had a farm. I used this version of the song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFX98pqzb3o

You can make a poster of a farm with all the animals that are mentioned in the song. Ask students to listen to the song carefully and number the animals in the order they hear them. You can also write the noise that each animal makes and refer to it while listening and singing the song to help students with recognizing the animals. 

Reading - ideas on how to organize a lesson

This is a lesson I did in the fifth grade. The unit deals with going to for expressing future and the topic of holidays and camping. I came up with two simple texts so that I can do some group work. This is what we did.

Warm up activity - revision of the vocabulary about sport. Put some flashcards on the board and ask students to work in two groups. Make sentences on pieces of paper and ask students to run to the board and stick the sentences on the correct pictures. You can measure the time and turn the activity into an amusing game. With this activity you revise sport, going to, plus you make students move around and have fun while learning.

Main activity - Students work in two groups. They need to read a text and replace the pictures in the text with words. Then they fill in another worksheet by answering some questions related to the text.

To check if the students in the groups understood the texts ask two representatives, one from each group to come to the board, answer the questions and fill in the Venn Diagram. The other members from the groups can also help if needed.

End of class activity - Ask students to work in  pairs. Give them a piece a paper, ask them to fold it in  half, then again, and again and again:) Then ask them to write a sentence using going to, by writing one word in each square. Then they cut the pieces, mix the pieces of paper and give them to another pair. They are expected to create a sentence. It saves teacher's time for preparing cards for the lesson and it's fun for the kids.