Topic - Based Teaching
Dear Readers and Colleagues, In the May-September 1997 issues of “English”, “British Council Presents” became a regular feature. The page was devoted to methods of teaching English to young learners. It was a product of the free-of-charge seminars, provided by the educational unit of the British Council, the aim of which was to help school teachers better address young learners’ needs. The materials of seminars led by E. Lenskaya, E. Borovikova, and N. Achkasova were also contributed to the feature. We have to recognise that different elements of the concept of YL ELT need to be constantly tested in different classrooms and contexts and by different teachers. So, the contributions from teachers have always been included. Feedback from the teachers showed that they appreciate teaching ideas and materials for use in class. Even if they are familiar with the game or technique, when they read how other teachers work with them they are motivated to go back to the same activity. Now we are starting this feature again. This time it contains teachers’ contributions on the topics: “What is special about the first English language lesson? What should it be like?” and “Topic - based teaching”. We really would like to see the page as a forum for teachers. Do write to us (at “English”, “British Council Presents”) and share your views on teaching. We would like to publish your letters. Then we hope the page will continue to bring you good ideas and information, and help you keep in touch with the ELT world and teachers of young learners in particular.
By N. Achkasova YL Seminars Coordinator |
My First Lesson
It is very important for me to show to young learners that English is fun. They are 6–7 years old.
When I enter the classroom with my friend Froggy (a toy frog) I greet the children. I say: “Hello. I’m Irene. This is my friend.” Froggy says: “Hello, I’m Froggy”. He comes up to every child and greets him or her, introduces himself, and asks the name of the pupil. Then he shakes hands with them or pats their heads. Language items are: “What’s your name? My name is . . . , I’m . . . , Hello! Hi! Good-bye!” We sing a song “What is your name?” together with the children. They sit so as to face each other. Froggy helps them sing.
Then Froggy shows them the English Alphabet. It is a very big, colourful picture. Froggy and I sing the ABC song and show the letters. Then we ask the children to try to sing this song with us. Their attempt is not very good but Froggy and I praise them. Then I hand out separate cards with letters and we try to sing the song in the following way: Froggy sings “A”, I sing “B”, a pupil sings “C”, another pupil sings “D”, etc. Every child sings his/her own letter and shows it.
Then we write a few children’s names on the blackboard and spell them.
Game: The children make a circle and they sing the song again; but when there is a vowel they stretch their hands; when there is a consonant they clap their hands. The instruction for them is the following: Make a circle, when Froggy shows you and you hear the letters A, E, I, O, U, Y, stretch your hands.
The bell rings. Froggy says “Good-bye.”
By Irene Baluk
Games at the Lessons
I would like to describe two interesting games. They work at my lessons well.
Game “Who are you?”
The children know already each other’s names. One of them is the leader. He stands with his back to all the children. One of the children touches him and says “Good morning!” The leader should say the name of the person who’s touching him. If he is right, the other children say “Yes!”, and the person who touched him becomes the leader. If he is wrong, they say “No” and he leads again.
Another variant of the game “Who are you?”
One of the group is the leader. His eyes are closed (you can use a scarf). The other children stand in a circle. The leader turns around, then moves and touches some of the children. He can touch their heads, or shoulders, or hair, and then he is expected to say the name of the person. If he is right, the other children say “Yes, you are right,” and person who was touched becomes the leader. If he is wrong, they say “No, you are wrong!” and he leads again.
These games are especially good for the first lessons. Within the games learners become more relaxed. They learn how to cooperate and to interact in the foreign language.
By Ann Cheklina
The First Lesson: Hello! Let’s Play
When I meet a group of 7 year olds for the first time I always ask them why they want to learn English. I think that motivation is very important. It may seem strange, but even such young learners have already got their own motivation to learn English. First, they say that they want to communicate with people from different countries and most of them have travelled a lot to various countries and they have seen for themselves that English is the language of international communication.
And the second strong motivation for children is usually the ability to understand the English speech and instructions in computer games. Children today spend much time playing computer games, and I always try to derive some benefit from these activities. Usually the children have been learning English for two years in the kindergarten and they know the linguistic items of the first lesson: “What’s your (his/her) name?”, “I’m . . .”; “My/his/her name is . . .”, “He’s/She’s . . .”; “Hello/Hi”, “Good-bye/Bye”. It’s important to encourage children to communicate not only with the teacher but with each other. I ask them to imagine they are the heroes of their favourite computer games or cartoons and to introduce themselves to the others not only with the help of words but also using mime and gestures.
Children can draw pictures of the characters, or bring stickers with the pictures on and act out the characters together. So they can recycle and practise these linguistic items, and those who don’t know them can easily remember new words and phrases. At the very first lesson it is important to stress that English is not only fun, but in our school it is one of the main subjects such as Math and Reading. Of course, we are going to play games, learn and sing English songs, and listen to the tapes; but children should work hard and always do their homework if they want to achieve good results.
Then, at the first lesson, I usually try to explain the main difference between English and Russian languages in order to establish the correlation between English and other school subjects. I think that English is closer to Mathematics than to Russian because the English sentence has strict logical word order. I show English word order with the help of some coloured toy bricks. I ask children to count the words in the question “What is his name?” and in the answer “His name is Jim.” Then I take four bricks and put them on the table. I ask children to make an answer out of the question by exchanging the places of the bricks corresponding to the words “his name” and the word “is”. I always have these bricks on my table, and each time somebody misses the word “is”, or mixes up the word order, I remind them about the bricks. When I present a new phrase I show the word order in bricks, and I always use the bricks of one colour for the verb and of a different colour for the subject. So the children get used to the colour of the verb being in the first place before the subject-colour in questions, and the other way round in answers. At the end of the lesson I always ask children to tell their parents at home about what they have learnt.
By Lena Filippovskaya
Topic: Animals
Functions:
1. Asking about things.
2. Giving and receiving objects.
3. Expressing likes and dislikes.
4. Giving commands.
Structures and expressions:
I’ve got (haven’t got) . . ./Have you got . . .?
Nouns: domestic and wild animals, pets.
Adjectives: big, small, little, pretty.
Commands: try to guess; come along; do it with me; let’s go.
Who is it? Who lives in this house?
Do you like . . ? I like/don’t like it.
Materials:
Picture cards for the topic, word cards, stencils of different animals.
Activities:
1. Create a wall graph titled: “What Kind of Pet Do You Have?”
Trace and cut out one or more stencils of a dog, cat or fish shapes, and place on the graph with children’s names.
2. Game “Who lives in this house?”
One child hides a picture (a toy) of an animal in a small house.
Children: “Who lives in this house? Isn’t it a little mouse?”
Child: “No, no. The little mouse doesn’t live in this house.”
Children: “Who lives in this house?”
Child:
“Try to guess, try to guess. I shall sing you a song, it is not very long: ‘Mew-mew’ ”.Children: “A little cat lives in the house.
Not a pretty little mouse.
Cat, cat, come along. We shall sing you this song: ‘mew-mew’ ”.Child: “I’m a little kitty,
I like to tippy toe.
Won’t you do it with me?
Ready now, let’s go.”
Repeat the same with dog, rabbit, elephant.
“I’m a little rabbit,
I like to hop, hop, hop.
Come on and do it with me.
It’s fun; we’ll never stop.”
“I’m a great big elephant,
I take big steps so slow.
I’d like you to join me,
Ready now? Let’s go.”
“I’m a little dog,
I like to run, and run.
If you would do it with me,
We could have such fun.”
3. Animal alphabet.
Each pupil makes a picture of an animal. These pictures can be put together as alphabet cards to make a poster.
By Elena Kojemiakina
Topic: “My Relatives” (8–9 year old students)
Situations: |
Language demands: vocabulary, structures and sounds |
|
1. Telling a new friend
about the family. 3. A talk with mother about the relatives. 4. Making place markers for large family party. |
1. Vocabulary: parents, son, daughter, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, cousins, great-grandparents, grandchildren, grandparents, husband, wife.2. Structures: “I have got . . .”, “He/she has got . . .”, “Have/has I/he/she got . . . ?”, “Who is . . . ?” 3. Possessives ‘s or s’: my sister’s name, his cousins’ mother, her aunt’s friend’s husband, a child’s brother . . . 4. Sounds: parents’[s], nephew’s[z], niece’s [iz]. |
|
Functions: |
Topic: “My Relatives” |
Materials: |
1. Asking a friend about
his family. 3. Introducing a new friend to the parents. |
Coloured paper and pencils, cards, glue, scissors, photos | |
Activities: |
||
Open-Ended Activities |
Closed Activities |
|
1. Making a picture of
the family tree with photos. 3. Role-playing: “A New Friend at Home”. 4. Singing songs and rhymes. 5. Making words out of a letter string. (It helps to improve spelling.) |
1. Matching place markers with the
relatives’ names according to the story. 2. “A” reads a letter about his friend’s family, “B” draws a family tree. 3. A memory game. Telling a story after looking for a few minutes at the family tree. 4. Writing words into columns according to the sounds [s],[z], [iz] in possessives. |
|
| Products: a role-play, a song, place markers, exhibition of the family tree pictures. |
By Lena Filippovskaya
What’s the Wonder?
Language Arts Activity
Most people are curious about lands they’ve only heard about or seen in pictures and films, but never visited. This activity takes advantage of students’ natural curiosity about other countries to encourage them to learn more about them.
What you need
Index cards
Reference materials, such as atlases, encyclopedias, informational books, magazines, and pamphlets
Poster board for a map (optional)
What to do
Have students meet in small groups to choose a country they would like to know more about.
Ask each group to make a list of “I wonder questions” about the country. For example, if the subject is Greenland, students might write: I wonder . . . What is the weather like in Greenland? Or: I wonder . . . How do people dress in Greenland?
Within each team, have students write their “I wonder questions” on index cards, with their names, and shuffle the cards. Then have each student draw at least one card (it should be a question someone else has posed). Students research the country to find the answer to the question. After they write the answers on the index cards, students can display them on a bulletin board that includes a map of the country. If they wish, students could include pictures or photographs to support their answer.
Teaching options
Students might respond to the queries by writing letters to the students posing the questions. In their answers, they should cite where they located the information. The model you provide might begin like this:
Dear Tiffany,
You asked what kind of climate Greenland has. According to the World Book . . .
Students can write a brief essay about how they feel about the country they researched. Would they like to visit it? Did their attitude toward that country change after they learned more about it? What did they learn that they especially liked or disliked? What else would they like to know?
Use this method of generating and answering questions for other Social Studies inquiries, too.
A Storytelling Festival
Language Arts Activity
This activity encourages students to explore the native cultures of the Americas, to learn some aspects of oral storytelling, and to share their knowledge with others.
What you need
Legends or folktales from the cultures of peoples native to the Americas
What to do
Introduce students to legends and folktales of native American cultures by reading one to the class. If possible, choose a story that explains some aspect of the culture, such as the origin of a custom, or of the environment, like the existence of a mountain range.
Explain that many of these stories were created by storytellers, who passed them on to others orally, not in writing. Only later they were written down. Tell students that they are going to become oral storytellers themselves. They will chose a story to learn and then present the story as part of a storytelling festival.
Divide students into storytelling teams or, if you prefer, have them form their own groups. Give students time to do research and to choose a story. Tell students that their story should say something important about the culture from which it comes. Remind students that their stories will be performed and that they might want to choose a story that lends itself to a dramatic reading or presentation. (Note: You might want to review the groups’ choices.)
The group should study the story and make a plan for how they would like to perform, or “tell,” it. For example, students may want to assign different parts of the story to each group member or have one group member act out a part or play an instrument, etc. The group should know the beginning, middle, and end of its story.
Encourage students to be creative about their presentations. Some students may want to add music and props, some may be able to incorporate costumes or rhythmic movements.
Allow enough rehearsal time for each group. Hold the first performances in the classroom. Then discuss with students how to share the storytelling with other classes, or with family and community members.
Teaching options
Tape the presentations and make them available in the school library. You might also share the tape with a class in another community that is studying the same, or a related, theme.
If student enthusiasm stays high, suggest that students share their stories with the community by presenting it at local nursing home, hospital, or the like.
Encourage students to think of a landform or custom in their region and to write a “folktale” about it.
Make a Big Welcome Book
Art and Language Arts Activity
With this activity, children work as a team to create a “welcome book” to help new students feel at ease, and to express a personal view of their school and themselves.
What you need
Large sheets of drawing/construction paper
Yarn, paper fasteners, or other binding materials
Optional: camera for taking individual or class photos
What to do
Help children brainstorm what information they might include in a Welcome Book for new students by asking:
What do you like best about your school?
What would you tell a new student to help them feel at ease?
What rules does a new student need to know?
Make a list of children’s ideas. Then give each child a large sheet of drawing paper and let them work in small groups to create a big book page for a class Welcome Book. You may want to suggest the following:
Draw a picture of yourself with your name at the bottom.
Draw a picture map of your classroom. Label Reading Corner, coat closet, desks, bookshelves, or other areas.
Write the rules students need to follow in your class.
Paste a snapshot of yourself onto a big book page.
Paste a snapshot of your class onto a big book page.
Write something nice about your teacher.
Draw a picture of your teacher, the cafeteria, or the playground.
Create a “My favorite . . .” page, which might be entitled “My favorite Game at Recess,” “My Favorite Song to Sing in School,” and so forth.
Help children bind their pages into a class Welcome Book. When new children arrive, assign a classroom buddy to present the book to each of them to look at together or individually. When new children are ready, encourage them to add their own page or snapshot to the Welcome Book.
Teaching options
The Big Welcome Book could be expanded or adapted for all classes and kept in the main office for any new child.
Children who are new in school and come from other countries might enjoy adding to the Big Book Welcome Book themselves by drawing pictures of their school, friends, or something else from their native lands.
As a challenge, children might consider what visitors to the school (including parents) might need to know about to make their visit pleasant. Children can create a Big Visitor’s Book to be kept in the main office.
Fractured Fairy Tales
Language Arts Activity
In this creative writing activity, students will use familiar characters, plots and settings from traditional fairy tales to create “fractured” versions. By altering the story line, adding an unexpected twist, or creating a contemporary “spin,” students will experiment with satire, irony and parody.
Background
The first two little pigs in “The Three Little Pigs” made some serious mistakes constructing their homes. What if the third little pig had refused to bail them out in order to teach them a lesson? Would they have had to reserve a room at The Swine Street Inn? Would they have organized a Piggy Posse to run the wolf out of town? Or would they have ended up as “ham jam”?
What you need
Writing materials
A sense of humor!
What to do
Ask students to list some of their favorite fairy tales. Ask them to discuss some elements that many of the stories share. You might find it helpful to web their responses or to use a Venn diagram to illustrate similarities and differences. Some of the common elements are:
Once upon a time . . .
Good vs. evil
beautiful princess/handsome prince
magic
talking animals
. . . happily ever after.
Tell students that they will be having an opportunity to “fracture” one of these tales. A fractured fairy tale is designed to be humorous by changing the story in an unexpected way; like altering a character, or adding modern language and events. Ask for suggestions on ways to fracture “Cinderella”. List ideas on the board. These may include:
Cinderella is homely and has beautiful stepsisters.
The prince can’t dance.
She likes to cook and clean.
The magic wand is broken and can’t get the spell quite right.
She doesn’t want to get married anyway.
She didn’t want a carriage; she wanted a Mazda!
Tell students that a humorous version of a well-known story is called a parody. Explain that the humor can be satirical (making fun of the Prince, for example), or ironical (the broken wand).
Instruct students that other than the fractured elements, the fairy tales should be true to the classic form. Invite them to work alone or with a partner. Use the writing process to draft, to revise, to edit and to publish the stories. Share and enjoy in a silly author’s circle!
Teaching options
Students may write the stories in script form and act them out for the class.
Students may write in a picture book format.
Students could put on a puppet show of all the fractured stories to share with a younger grade.
What’s the Wonder?
Language Arts Activity
Most people are curious about lands they’ve only heard about or seen in pictures and films, but never visited. This activity takes advantage of students’ natural curiosity about other countries to encourage them to learn more about them.
What you need
Index cards
Reference materials, such as atlases, encyclopedias, informational books, magazines, and
pamphlets
Poster board for a map (optional)
What to do
Have students meet in small groups to choose a country they would like to know more about.
Ask each group to make a list of “I wonder questions” about the country. For example, if the subject is Greenland, students might write: I wonder . . . What is the weather like in Greenland? Or: I wonder . . . How do people dress in Greenland?
Within each team, have students write their “I wonder questions” on index cards, with their names, and shuffle the cards. Then have each student draw at least one card (it should be a question someone else has posed). Students research the country to find the answer to the question. After they write the answers on the index cards, students can display them on a bulletin board that includes a map of the country. If they wish, students could include pictures or photographs to support their answer.
Teaching options
Students might respond to the queries by writing letters to the students posing the questions. In their answers, they should cite where they located the information. The model you provide might begin like this:
Dear Tiffany,
You asked what kind of climate Greenland has. According to the World Book . . .
Students can write a brief essay about how they feel about the country they researched. Would they like to visit it? Did their attitude toward that country change after they learned more about it? What did they learn that they especially liked or disliked? What else would they like to know?
Use this method of generating and answering questions for other Social Studies inquiries, too.