Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Pre-school ESL...breakthrough moment.

This blog purports to be about teaching English in Italy, but I haven't blogged about that for such a long time. Mainly because it is all just ticking over right now. And because everything is taking a backseat to the Delta (exam June 1 - beginning to think in terms of "countdown").

The biggest buzz is from my pre-school class at the moment. It's all come together so well this year (compared with last year's mad scrabble around for inspiration). My basic lesson plan is always the same, but I choose to emphasis different aspects each time, working on building their vocabulary and giving them usable chunks of language. A lesson of one and a half hours (with anywhere from 16 through to 28 kids) goes something like this.

Take the roll - they answer "Yes" to their names.
Count the kids, out loud, going around the class (yes, they can count past 20 now).
Use  genkienglish.net warm-up song (action version), What's Your Name song, Hello, How Are You song, to get them singing, moving, laughing, having fun.

Read a story book. So far we've "done" "Mrs Wishy-Washy's Farm" (success), "Animal Boogie"  (near success), "Watch Out, Big Bro's Coming" (fail), Ten In The Bed (huge success), and today I introduced "Are You My Mother?"...

Move into Wiggle Time. We use the Wiggles songs a lot. Their favourites are Five Little Ducks (be warned, if you use the live version, with Captain Feathersword crying his eyes out, expect hysterical laughter from the kids), Here Comes A Bear, Captain Feathersword (the Pirate Dance), and Rock-a-Bye-Your-Bear.

Once we're all Wiggled out, we move on a DVD of children's songs which I've had forever.CYP Best songs from this are Open Shut Them, Teddy Bear Teddy Bear, Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, Heads Shoulders, Insy Winsy Spider, If You're Happy and You Know It, and to my great surprise, Tommy Thumb!

And THAT is where today's breakthrough came from.

I like Tommy Thumb in that it teaches two very usable chunks - Where is X? and Here I am! I'm never sure of the actual uptake in the class - they usually learn something VERY different from what I think I'm teaching! So today while I was reading "Are You My Mother?", and we got to the part where the baby bird says "Here I am, Mother!" and one of my students sang "Here I am, Here I am", I wanted to sing and dance and cry all at the same time! A very exciting moment...

And after all the singing and dancing (of the lesson plan, I mean), I hand out a worksheet which has some tie-in with the lesson. Today I tried to move towards literacy, by giving the 5/6 year olds a tracing writing sheet, the 4/5 yr olds a "letter a" writing sheet (trace, copy, and fill in the space with "a"), and the 3/4 yr olds a colouring sheet with the same theme (family words). Hard to tell how that went, although I noticed that one of my "problems" was thrilled by it! He doesn't usually participate in the colouring, so perhaps he's telling me that he's really wanting to be challenged. Something to think about for next time.

When I think back three years ago, and how terrified I was at the idea of teaching young and very young learners, I have to smile...can't laugh yet, because there is still so much for me to learn, but I'm so glad I said yes to giving it a chance.

1 comment:

Giselle Pons said...

I love your account of teaching pre-school kids. Have you ever done "One, little, two little, three little indians"? It's important to do it forwards AND backwards. That way it really sticks in their minds
Ciao. Giz