Creating cards / learning materials - verbs

In my last  few posts I want to show how I work closely with my students in creating learning materials together. The aim for this lesson was to revise verbs. These are third grade students and they are just starting to learn how to read and write,
The English Adventure book is used in this grade and I find it really interesting and useful. Especially useful are the cards in the back of the book. I use them for different activities which make learning English more amusing for the students.
I started the lesson by asking the students to cut the cards from the back of the book.
Then I asked them to make paper word cards.

Next, each student had to match the words with the pictures. 

In the end I asked the students to work in pairs and check each other's matching.

Introducing adjectives

This is a lesson I did in the second grade. The lesson aim is introducing adjectives and their use in a sentence.

Lesson plan

Warm up activity:
1. Show students flash cards with the animals you have taught them previously and ask them to name the animals.
2. Give each student a flash card a ask them to say a whole sentence. ex. It's a bear / It's a lion
3. Put the flash cards on different walls in the classroom and play the game listen and point. Students listen to the word and they point to the correct picture.

Main part:
1. Put some pictures of animals on the board (bear, elephant, spider, snake and a giraffe). Show students cards with adjectives ( big, fat, tall, long, small) Try to elicit from the student which adjective best describes each animal. Repeat the words several times so that they practice the pronunciation and then make whole sentences. It's a big bear/ It's a fat elephant.

2. Use animal toys and give one toy to each student. Make cards with the adjectives written on them and put them around the classroom. Ask students to walk around the classroom and find one adjective that can be used to describe their animal. Make sure that you give them different animals now from the ones that are on the board. You can give them hippo-fat; rhino-fat; crocodile -long; bird/fish-small. etc. After they find the best adjective for their toy ask them to stand in a line and make a sentence with the adjective - It's a long crocodile. Help them out when necessary.

3. Write a sentence on the board- It's a big bear. Elicit the word order in the sentence and ask students to remember it. Prepare a poster with post it notes. Write jumbled up sentences and ask students to come to the board, one by one, and put the words in the correct order by re- arranging the post it notes. After they put them in the correct order, ask them to read the sentence out loud. Or if they find it too demanding help them out with the pronunciation.

End of class activity:
To finish the lesson in a positive note. sing the song The elephant walks like this and that...
Point out the adjectives in the song and make sure students remember them.
Enjoy your lesson!

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! :)

Vocabulary revison - Food

Teaching young learners means that you constantly need to find different ways to engage your students and keep them busy:) This is one way we revise vocabulary - we create food out of paper. Then students use "I like...." to present the food they like.