Archive for the 'Language' Category

Jan

Silly Phonics Tips

As many of you, I also teach phonics regularly. There are things that always trip up the students.

The first is QU. So I tell them a little story. Q is very scared (mine if they don’t know the word scared). He always needs his friend U to help him (again, mine if needed). Another fun way is once students get the idea is print out a giant Q and a U (enough so that every is a q or a u). But them in teams. Play a game where they have to move around the room, but Q and U always have to stay together. Likewise if Q wants water or to go to the bathroom, U has to go. But not the other way around.

The next is silent E. Again tell a story that E gets very angry when he has to stand at the end of the word. And E yells at the other vowel “Say your name” (since long vowels sound like the name of the letter). Make a list of words that use silent E (by this point students should have learned the short vowels). It doesn’t really matter if you use nonsense words. The point is to get the kids involved too. So you bring three student up to the front and give them each a letter (here are where those big letters come in handy). For example, you would have a S, an I and a T. Have students read the word. Then give a fourth student the E. Have him/her act angry for having to be last. Have E go up to I and say “Say your name!” and then go back to his/her space. Then get the class to read the new word, site. In my opinion, nonsense words work better for this.

Finally, the dreaded PH. I’ll admit, I just came up with this one because in one of my 1st grade classes (but high level for their age) was learning the work trophy. Of course, they kept saying tropy. So finally I told them this. P and H don’t like each other. So they f-f-f-fight. It really clicked with the students. And now they correct themselves when they say tropy instead of trophy.

Feel free to try these out in your class, and leave a comment letting me know how it goes.

posted by Kathryn in Language,Phonics,Speaking,Teaching,Teaching Resources and have No Comments

Nov

WoongJin Shadowing

As I said before, we’re now part of the Woongjin Plus Academy franchise. It has its good points and bad points. Classes that are slightly more advanced have the option of doing shadowing. Essentially it’s reading a chapter book in addition to their curriculum. It’s kind of fun. Of the three classes doing it, two love it. The third class is 2 fifth graders and they hate everything. And I have the wonderful luck to be teaching the book “Speaking Tutor” to them. Yeah, it is as bad as you think.

Now, of course, we can’t just read and discuss the book. No, I have a book of various activities we’re supposed to work through. I am the teacher. Thus I am going to pick the activities I want to do. Plus, according to some teachers, I should be teaching language, not literacy. *cough* bull shit *cough*. Whatever. It’s actually easier to do that with the younger kids because there is so much grammar they don’t know. So, one of my activities is going to be finding and writing all the irregular past tense verbs we can find. Then we’ll write their base form. Presto. Language activity. There is also a lot of directional language in the book (up, down, left, right, etc) so I’m going to write the sentence from the book and we’ll draw a picture to illustrate the sentence. Bingo. Language activity.

The older students are doing a lot of writing. They have a worksheet they have to complete for each chapter. This is one I made. I’ll have to throw it in my dropbox so I can post it here. Friday’s activity was to describe the main character’s personality now and then in the future (I told them 20 years). You would have thought I asked them to write a dissertation on the main character of “The Elevator Duck”. I wanted a paragraph on each.

Oh well. If I think of anymore great activities, I’ll talk about here.

posted by Kathryn in Grammar,Language,Reading,Students,Teaching,Woonjin Plus,Writing and have No Comments

Aug

Balls

I see a beach ball as an essential tool for games. So far I haven’t had any accidents and even if a kid gets bonked in the head, it’s an air filled ball. It isn’t going to hurt too much. I used to use a smaller nerf type ball about the size of a baseball. It worked okay for the older kids, but the little ones didn’t have the manual dexterity to throw and catch it.

Any how, back to using a ball. Currently we use both the “Let’s Go” series and the “Tops” series with the majority of our students. I’ll write a future post on how I use a ball with “Let’s Go”. I generally don’t use it with “Tops” because it’s more grammar and writing focused.

On to games. One is just asking open-ended questions. It’s best for mid to upper level students who have a good vocabulary and good grasp of how to form questions. The questions can range from the mundane such as “What’s your name?” to the complex such as “If you could be any animal, what would it be and why?” You can also practice specific sentence structures. With a lower level class one day, I did “I like _____.” where they could fill in the blank with anything. I was trying to practice using the plural form (yes, I know there are exceptions) for things you like.

All of these things are really boring activities on their own. But add in the fun of throwing a ball around the classroom and suddenly they’re the best things ever.

My ball is on the smaller side. I’d be surprised if it were a full 6 inches in diameter.

If you try it in your classroom, let me know how it goes!

posted by Kathryn in Activites,Fun things,Games,Language,Speaking,Teaching and have No Comments

Jun

What Is He Wearing?

I was at HomePlus one day and I found markers made for writing on glass. What could be more fun? I bought two sets. Phoenix Class was studying clothing and the question “What is he/she wearing?” Usually I have students do this on paper and then we go though it orally. Now don’t get me wrong, the kids love to color. But when I told them they were getting to color on the windows, they almost flipped their little minds.

In a way, it works better on the windows because it’s easier for other students to see and they can use other students’ pictures in their speaking.

So I present, Phoenix class (Martin, Jenny, Julie, Stephanie)…

posted by Kathryn in Activites,Fun things,Language,Maple Square,Pictures,Speaking,Students,Teaching and have No Comments

Jun

Kung Fu Panda

I was going through old videos and uploaded some to YouTube. This is finally after getting myself logged back into my account. Something is buggered (or was buggered) with this stupid linking your Google and YouTube account. But I digress.

This is a video done right before 2009 annual presentations. These kids would be first graders now. I proudly present Newton Class from Little Campus.

posted by Kathryn in Language,Little Campus,Presentations,Speaking,Students,Videos and have No Comments

Jun

Know Thy Roots

I got a random email for this. While it’s not directly applicable to ESL learners, it is to teachers. Just take a look. Those words you take for granted everyday came from some where. English is not a “pure” language. We get our words from many different places.

Those of you who are teaching higher level students, it can help to have short discussions about word roots and common prefixes and suffixes. Sometimes a student learning that RE added to the front of the word means do it again, can make the difference in comprehension and confusion.

Way back when (you know, when the GRE was still a paper and pencil test) I took the GRE, I brushed up on things like bi- tri- and so on. I vaguely remember it saving my butt on one or two questions.

The long and short of this is: Don’t neglect the roots of English as a teaching strategy.

posted by Kathryn in Language,Reading,Teaching Resources,Vocabulary and have Comments (3)

May

ABC – Come On Sing Along!

I’m teaching one class of 7-year-old (kindergarteners) once a week. Right now, they’re still working on learning the alphabet. I was at Home Plus (where else?) on day and saw a bucket of alphabet magnets. The price wasn’t too outrageous (about what I’d expect in a US toy store) so I bought a set. It worked out perfectly. There were 4 sets of letters and 4 kids in the class. As they learn new letters, I add them to a plastic bag.

At the beginning of each class, we sing the ABC song a few times as a warm up. Then we do rock scissor paper (to avoid fighting over colors). When that’s all done, each student has a bag of magnets. They go up to the board and have to put them up in correct order. They struggle with things like the b and the d and the q and the p, so we sing and look at our big ABC poster.

Here are a few pictures of them from the first time they did the activity.