How I start my lessons

Hello everyone and welcome to part five of my five-piece blog. In this short series I will present some of the techniques I use for teaching English as a second language to grade 1 students at a primary school in Thailand.

In my final blog entry I will tell and show you how I start each and every one of my lessons. So, without further ado, let's take a look.

As you saw in the video, I start the lesson with the children spelling out the day (to which I sometimes add the verb "to be" chant as discussed in my first entry), followed by roll call and identifying the subject, unit and topic of the coming lesson (which I forgot to include in the video).

I start with the day in order to review spelling, ordinal numbers (focus on pronunciation), the months of the year and finally big numbers. Another reason for doing it this way is to try and teach things that are not part of the curriculum (we only learn numbers up to 100 in grade 1), but that are useful for them.

I follow it up with a roll call to teach the words "boys", "girls", "present" and "absent" as well as to give the children a sense of responsibility and the need to observe the world - in this case to be able to see which of their friends are missing. I sometimes use this opportunity to also teach addition and subtraction, also with the aim to make the students see that there is often more than one way to solve a problem.

My final routine before starting the lesson is meanwhile naming the subject, unit and topic. This is not done just for the sake of vocabulary. Because we switch units after every exam it also teaches the children how a teaching year is structured, hopefully making them better at anticipating the change.

As you might imagine, the students' proficiency to answer the questions that you saw in the video did not come overnight. It required repetition and patience, but I think it paid off, hopefully expanding my students' horizons and teaching them the value of learning.

Thank you very much for reading through these thoughts of mine and let me know what you think in the comments below.

Teaching "can" by using a song

Hello everyone and welcome to part four of my five-piece blog. In this short series I will present some of the techniques I use for teaching English as a second language to grade 1 students at a primary school in Thailand.

Can you clap if you're a bird? Probably not, but can you fly? That would largely be a yes, penguins and ostriches excluded. But if you want your students to correctly answer these questions and have some fun along the way, then one of the best ways that I found was through using the following song: 

Yes, I Can! Animal Song for Children

This song teaches the use of the auxiliary verb "can" in questions and answers (both positive and negative) It is quite dance-friendly, because it contains verbs of movement that can be mimicked and the children definitely love it, as you will see in the video below.

Of course, children can get quite excited and start moving around a lot to the point of hitting their friends, so make sure they have plenty of space and be ready to calm them down if necessary.

What about you? What are your favourite songs to teach your little ones? Let me know in the comments below.

Teaching writing (and reading) with Cherry the Dragon

Hello everyone and welcome to part three of my five-piece blog. In this short series I will present some of the techniques I use for teaching English as a second language to grade 1 students at a primary school in Thailand.

I come from Slovenia, a small country in Europe, more specifically from its capital, Ljubljana. The symbol of Ljubljana is a --- you guessed it --- a dragon or a swamp monster that was supposedly encountered and defeated by Jason and the Argonauts who came to these parts while looking for a way back to Greece.

It comes as no surprise that when my best friend visited me with his family, he brought a dragon plush doll and also gave me the idea of creating a scrap book that allows children to take the dragon home with them, take photos and write about what they did together.

We held a name selection vote and decided on Cherry, since the fluffy toy is green and is holding a red heart, making her look like a cherry in a bunch of green leaves. I then purchased a scrap book and off our intrepid dragon went.

The way I do it is to start giving Cherry out towards the end of the first term to give the children more time to master writing. I give it to the first child on Monday and they have to bring it back on Wednesday. The next child gets it on Wednesday and has to return it on Friday. The luckiest little tyke gets it on Friday and has to bring it back on Monday.

But that's not the end of the story. After bringing Cherry back we then read the sentences that the child had written (both in English and Thai) and correct the mistakes. Because most children do similar things with Cherry, we also learn similar words which is great, because I believe that a lot of knowledge can be gained through repetition.

Here's what it looks like:

 

And here are some photos of Cherry and my students.

What about you? What is your favourite supplementary method of teaching writing? Drop a line in the comments.

Breaking up the the "IamFaiAenYou?"

Hello everyone and welcome to part two of my five-piece blog. In this short series I will present some of the techniques I use for teaching English as a second language to grade 1 students at a primary school in Thailand.

One of the most popular English sentences in Thailand must be the "I am fine - and you?" Children are taught this sentence from an early age and almost all of them can and will respond to your "How are you?" with their more or less correctly pronounced version of this answer. And, sadly, it will often be a garbled single-word phrase of "IamFaiAenYou?"

The main reason for that, in my opinion, is the way Thai children are taught this most basic of answers. They understand it as a single unit instead of a set of separate words with each having their own individual meaning. Instead of seeing the Lego pieces, they only see the completed structure - and that, coupled with children being shy and trying to answer as quickly as possible, is where pronunciation mistakes creep in.

In order to break up this gelatinous goo of a sentence back into its constituent parts, I use gestures and arm/body movements, aimed at separating each of the words in the sentence and give them them each their own set of gestures.

After doing the basic version I moreover use other possible answers like "I'm great", "I'm hot", "I'm angry" and so on, each associated with a particular facial expression. During the teaching of this little spiel I also pay special attention on the students' pronunciation and you can judge for yourselves if I'm indeed successful.

Here's the basic "script":

Teacher: How are you?
Students: I am fine thank you, and you?
Teacher: I am fine too, thank you very much!

And here's the video:

I try to use this little play once every day after the students memorize it and every period I teach before they do. What do you think? Have your say in the comments below.

Teach the verb "to be" in the present, past and future with a short chant

Hello everyone and welcome to part one of my five-piece blog. In this short series I will present some of the techniques I use for teaching English as a second language to grade 1 students at a primary school in Thailand.

All who made an attempt to learn Thai language know that it does not use a single form of the verb "to be" and that it does not use it in all the situations that English does. Moreover, while Thai can use specific marker words for indicating tenses, sometimes they indicate time simply by using adverbs of time. In English we are obviously not so lucky and need to use the correct form of auxiliary and/or main verb.

However, the aim of this chant is not to teach the difference between simple and continuous tense forms or the difference in meaning between "will" and "going to" used for future. These are first-graders after all, so my aim is to introduce them to the structure of simple English sentences while also reviewing the days of the week. I also use gestures to signal present, past and future in order to establish a clearer separation between the three tenses.

Here's the chant:

Teacher: What day is it today?
Students: Today is Monday.
Teacher: What day was yesterday?
Students: Yesterday was Sunday.
Teacher: What day will be tomorrow?
Students: Tomorrow will be Tuesday.
Teacher: What day is it today?
Students: Today is Monday.

bam    ba la bam    ba la bam    ba la bam bam  
bam    ba la bam    ba la bam    ba la bam bam   
bam bam bam bam     baaaaaam 

(faster) One, two, three

Teacher: What day is it today? 
Students: Today is Monday.
Teacher: What day was yesterday?
Students: Yesterday was Sunday.
Teacher: What day will be tomorrow?
Students: Tomorrow will be Tuesday.
Teacher: What day is it today?
Students: Today is Monday.

And here's the video of me and the children in action.

I try to use this chant at least once every day and every lesson for the first month or so until the students remember it. And also worth noting is that students often like to join in for the teacher's part as you heard in the video, and I see absolutely nothing wrong with that. What do you think? Do you use anything similar? Let me know in the comments.