A card game to succeed in Cambridge YLE Flyers!

It's almost June and official exams for children who attend primary school are on their way! 

Is any of your students sitting the Cambridge  YLE Flyers exam?

If the answer is yes, but also if it's no, here you'll find a game to review the most difficult words from the official vocabulary list.

Divide the class into teams, and have children from one team reading the definitions while children from the other teams try to guess what it is being described.

If you'd like to buy the paper version of the game you can place an order on my BigCartel shop. I'll personally send you the .pdf file!

The digital version of Guess What?!? is also available on Amazon.com, Amazon.es, Indigo, Kobo  and Libris

Never underestimate the power of a quiz game when you're teaching English to children!!!

Actually, I think that many adult students could also get some advantages on using this game. 

Have fun!

   

The Life Cycle of a Dandelion

Science is one of the subjects that children who attend bilingual schools here in Spain have to study in English.

Most science books present just boring descriptions of things that children don't understand but have to learn by heart anyway to pass a monthly test.

I personally love science, especially because it's connected to real life, but, over all, because it's based on the scientific method, that let reality speak for itself, while we only have to make predictions, observe a phenomenon, and take notes to decide whether our predictions were right or not.

This means that science classes might potentially be something really engaging for children.

Unfortunately, this is not the case, at least according to my personal experience.

But, I won't complain about the missed opportunity of saving Spanish children from their boring science classes. Not at all!

Instead, I'll post about an experiment I personally conducted to observe the life cycle of plants and particularly of Dandelions (click on the picture above). Something you can easily do in your classes or at home to help kids understand and remember scientific terms in English.

Find some useful flashcards here. and a complete lesson plan here

More about science and the scientific method in the excellent children's book The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate.

---> Quiero leer este post en español

Lucy dedicates a lot of time and love to thinking about and writing the posts she shares with all of you. Because she believes that a better teaching is the key for a better future. If you find any help, value or joy in this blog, please consider becoming a supporting reader. A donation, in any amount, will be gratefully accepted. 

                                                   

Spring - Lesson Plan 2 - Plants

It's still springtime, isn't it? It's time for another post about it. Have you already read the first one I published in March? If you're looking for original ideas to use in your class you should definitely take a look at it.

'Plants' are another trending topic during this season and also a good excuse to teach eco-friendly habits!

I introduced the subject using, of course, a book illustrated by Eric Carle: The Tiny Seed.

It's kind of a long story for the short attention span of my preschoolers, so I had to illustrate a shorter version of it with finger paint. I selected 8 scenes and kind of rewrote it using repetitive patterns and questions  to keep the children's attention.

The best part? When they saw the giant flower, taller than the house and the trees.
They all screamed stuff like '¡Alá! ¡¡¡Es gigante!!!' 

I don't know if I've ever told you this, but I usually read a story twice, because the second time, since they remember some parts of if and already know some of the key words, they are more attentive and interactive.

Then, we learnt The Flowers Growing Song, to feel like a tiny seed!!! 

OK, the kinesthetic learning style is one of my favorites. I admit it.

Then, we took a much closer look at the different parts of a flower using this puzzle on page 8 of this Garden Pack 2, and we play with this fun game, on pages 9 and 10 of this other Garden Pack, that teaches children what a plant needs to grow
 
The 3 packs (the link to the first one is in the previous post) are full of ideas and activities. If you have a lot of time to spend with your kids--that's not my case--I warmly recommend you make the most of them.

Finally, I gave them a precious gift: a little transparent bag with 3 sunflower seeds to plant at home.

They were all very impressed.

More activities about plants and gardening here and here.

--> Quiero leer este post en español

Lucy dedicates a lot of time and love to thinking about and writing the posts she shares with all of you. Because she believes that a better teaching is the key for a better future. If you find any help, value or joy in this blog, please consider becoming a supporting reader. A donation, in any amount, will be gratefully accepted. 

                                                   

  

Popsicle Shapes

'Shapes' is a well known topic when you teach EFL but there's certainly more beyond the 6 or 7 nouns that we usually teach.

Since this year I decided that my Spanish students can learn almost as much as a native speaker in terms of content, I've been designing my classes in a totally different and definitely more interesting way.

One lucky day I came across this page and I had a sort of an epiphany, because popsicle sticks is one of those things that I've always seen in the supply shop where I buy stuff for the classes, but I couldn't imagine a 'real use' for them.

When I say 'real use' I mean that children can use them.

Finally I got one possible answer and this is what I came up with. 

If you follow my FB page you'd have noticed that it took me the whole month of March to complete the activity, but don't worry! It's not a slow and painful process, it's just that I don't have too much free time. Perhaps, a whole afternoon (3 or 4 hours) available would be enough.

Using them with the kids I noticed that it's important to show a picture of the shape you want your students to reproduce in order to point out the number of sides of that same shape.

Around that simple concept of sides you'll be able to work on everything else. Take a look at the picture above for some ideas.

After that, you can leave your children free to create whatever shape they like (irregular ones too) and keep working by themselves on adding sticks and talk about their creations.

More about shapes here and here

--> Quiero leer este post en Español

Lucy dedicates a lot of time and love to thinking about and writing the posts she shares with all of you. Because she believes that a better teaching is the key for a better future. If you find any help, value or joy in this blog, please consider becoming a supporting reader. A donation, in any amount, will be gratefully accepted. 

                                                   

Happy Easter Lesson Plan for Kids

Easter break is round the corner and I'd like to share with you what I planned in order to make it unforgettable for my Spanish pre-schoolers.

First of all I introduced the vocabulary: basket, eggs, bunny, chicks.

Because words become meaningful when they are used, and seen in this case, in a context, I didn't use any flashcards but, instead, these two books:

- Pete the Cat: Big Easter Adventure 

- Happy Easter, Peter!

Then we made our paper basket and filled it with 10 eggs. 

A great  handicraft that we needed to mime this Easter song.

I also planned an Easter egg hunt and, since I don't have my own classroom, I looked for an easy, but still fun, alternative. So, I printed some little eggs  and hid them under colorful cupcake paper cups.

If you're teaching elder children you can write words on the cups to practice reading and pronunciation.

We also made bunny masks and sang this song about sleeping bunnies.

We've been playing an Easter variation of the circle game Duck, duck…Goose! I invented for the occasion: Chick, chick…Bunny!!! 

For some relaxing moments, after hopping and skipping around the classroom, I found a couple of coloring pages of… a bunny and an egg, of course.

Finally, as a surprise for the end of the class, I bought  tons of chocolate eggs and hundreds of special Easter themed stickers!

Enjoy your Easter classes!!!

---> quiero leer este post en español

Lucy dedicates a lot of time and love to thinking about and writing the posts she shares with all of you. Because she believes that a better teaching is the key for a better future. If you find any help, value or joy in this blog, please consider becoming a supporting reader. A donation, in any amount, will be gratefully accepted.  

                                                   

 

   

Spring - Lesson plan1 - BUGS

Spring is definitely my favorite season and this time I decided to teach a little bit of science to my preschoolers. Bugs, plants, flowers… 

They are all around and it's interesting for the kids to take a closer look at them, in English too.

I started with the famous, but not environmentally conscious, bumble bee song and then we played that phonic game Bees and Flowers I told you about several posts ago. This time I drew daisies, tulips and sunflowers to make sure my students would learn flowers' names. 

At the beginning the kids were using the more general word flower they already knew and I had to explain them that flowers are like children: each one has a different name.

They seemed kind of enlightened by the concept. It was so cute!

After buzzing around for a while I introduced vocabulary about bugs like, spiders, ladybugs, snails, bees, dragonflies, caterpillars and butterflies, using flashcard games.

To help them remember a couple of the names in the list above you can use these two songs: One about ladybugs and the other about the spider and… prepositions of place!

This second one is not only catchy but also really useful.

To make the most of it and also review numbers from 1 to 20 we played a card game you'll find here on page 13 and 14. Instead of the trowel card my students were hiding and looking for… a spider!

In addition, I used some pages  from these two books: 

- Color and garden. Flowers 

- Daily Learning Drills. Grade K 

Finally we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Actually, we read it again because I had never realized before that it also shows the butterfly life cycle. 

An ESL teacher isn't expected to teach such scientific facts, so I usually use that same book to teach food, days of the week, numbers. It has been surprising to discover a new use of the story after owing it for 6 years.

Here you can download a cute picture of a butterfly life cycle to cut and use as a puzzle.

Next post… flowers and plants!

Meanwhile enjoy the springtime!

        


---> Quiero leer esta entrada en español


Lucy dedicates a lot of time and love to thinking about and writing the posts she shares with all of you. Because she believes that a better teaching is the key for a better future. If you find any help, value or joy in this blog, please consider becoming a supporting reader. A donation, in any amount, will be gratefully accepted.