One of the classes I enjoy teaching most is young children. They have boundless energy, and no challenge is too much for them. They arrive to class all smiles and eager to learn. The trick is keeping their attention. With practice I have tweaked my lesson plans around their short attention span. We start with ten minutes vocabulary learning either through a song or video and then we practice with a game such as four in a row. Here the children aim to win four cells in a row by matching the cell´s picture to the correct item of vocabulary in the list. This is a sure guarantee that they retain something. We then move on to another theme, for example The family. We look at pictures of the members of the family on video listening to the correct pronunciation and repeating them one by one. Following on we play a Mix and Match game where using the mouse on the computer the children need to put the picture blocks into the correctly labelled box to score points. Our next popular topic is My classroom. Here we look at all the items found in a classroom, and we listen and repeat the names. To help them with their spelling I usually play I spy with my little eye something beginning with the letter… where the children need to guess the object beginning with that letter. The winner then continues the game until the next child guesses the object and so on.
Once the topics of the day are complete, I introduce them to interactive games. I take out a pack of Flash Cards and we select all the animal cards from the pack. I then put them all face down and ask each child to select one. They are not to show it to anyone else. Each one in turn gets up and mimes their animal until someone guesses and it is then their turn. We finish when everyone has had a go. For the remainder of the class, I ask the children to sit in a circle and we play Chinese Whispers. In this game, I lead, as I want to revise the particular vocabulary we have just learned. I choose to revise items in the classroom. I decide on pencil and whisper this word in the ear of the first child in the row who then whispers it to the person next to them until we get to the last person in the circle who then has to say the word aloud. If they get it right, we all clap and if they don´t we try again with another item.
For the last five minutes of the class, I ask each child to think of three novel words they have learned in class that day and to repeat them back to the class. This little exercise works like a gem as it brings out the competitive streak in the children. They all vie with each other to see who can remember the best. The winner gets a gold star in their copybook.
So, learning in my classes with children is all about fun, energy, and lots of entertainment!
I feel a sense of reward when they leave the class with a smile on their faces!