Flashcards, because my child doesn't repeat

Hello everyone! Back in the saddle, finally!

I was about to write a post about Social Science - The Capitals of Europe, but I've just found these search terms - in the headline - in the statistics of my Spanish blog, mihijohablaingles.com, so I decided that maybe it's worth giving you some guidelines to solve this little inconvenience: MY CHILD DOES NOT REPEAT.

The first step, as always, is to find out the reasons why your children refuse to repeat the words in English (or any other language you're trying to teach them). Generally speaking, it may depend on shyness, shame, insecurity, frustration caused by a negative event which may have occurred in relation to this type of request or you're just dealing with children who simply don't like to be corrected because they are very competitive and associate the word 'mistake' to 'failure'.

Solution? GAMES

Games where, in order to win, you have to repeat words, read them out loud, say short sentences, ask simple questions, etc. We repeat the word aloud (or only the first syllable when we perceive that they can complete the word on their own) and let our children / students say or repeat them. If we realize that their way of pronouncing it is not appropriate, we repeat it ourselves, again, pronouncing it correctly, without making them notice the mistake. Why? Simply because if the child likes the game, he will want to play it again (and again) and that will give us the opportunity to practice the same words several times, thus he'll be able to learn new vocabulary and its correct pronunciation without pressure. Easy peasy.

While children are playing games they are learning in an informal way and they always want to win, so, while they're playing, they forget their inhibitions, concentrate and try to do their best. Playing games is a powerful tool in the teaching - learning process.

Once they have acquired more self-confidence, being introduced to new contents to play with will be perceived as a natural process.

Which games should we propose to the youngest? In the beginning, we should use very simple games like a Memory or a Bingo and later a Go Fish in order to introduce grammatical structures we want them to learn.

I hope you'll find this post useful and that you'll enjoy playing games and practicing  English together with your children.

More play ideas for children

--> I'd like to read this post in Spanish

Around Town: activities about shops and places in a city

I suppose every child around the world goes places with their parents. Schools, hospitals, parks, train stations, bus stations, and shops are all around and children learn to recognize them and to interact with the people who work there quite early on.

At the age of five, some of them have certainly already experienced grocery shopping with their parents: asking for food (in our cute Spanish neighbourood shops), asking about the price of it and handing money over to the shopkeeper to pay for the family shopping.

Taking this into account, since my classes are inspired by children's real life and interests, I planned some lessons around this topic. And looking back on the whole experience, I must say we enjoyed it a lot. Thanks to activities involving coloring in, cutting out and pasting, as well as role playing games, the kids learned a lot  and in a reasonably short time.

Step one: I showed them some flash cards and we played flash cards games to remember the different locations. In the first group, the places were either very familiar or had a very recognizable name: school, park, hospital, train station, bus station, gas station… and airport, which at the beginning was logically called… the plane station (my cuties!)

Then we made a paper city: I let them choose which place they wanted to color in, cut out and paste onto the wall of the classroom, where I had previously stuck a long paper street. If you're working with a very small group you could suggest doing a 3D version of the same project, using whatever recycling material you can think of (see pictures).

We also played this game: ' Look!' - pointing in any direction to get the kids attention, of course - 'I can see a train/plane/bus/car/ teacher… Where am I?'

The second step was to introduce the names of shops, such as the butcher's, the fishmonger's (one of the most loved by the kids, probably because it sounded funny) the baker's, the green grocer's, the flower shop, and the supermarket.

We use flashcards games to memorize the words and then we played charades: the players took turns acting it out, without speaking or making sound effects, while the other players tried to guess which shop they were in.

Then we added these shops to our paper city. Everyone got the same paper model of a generic shop. Each child decorated their own shop windows with the typical products of the shop they had chosen to illustrate.

Next we played Shopping List, another Orchard Toys memory game where each player has to be the first to fill their trolley with all of the items on their shopping list. There are also booster packs about fruit and vegetables, or clothes  available which are the perfect way to review a ton of vocabulary.

Finally we practiced real life situations. The last game was a role play about buying  and selling. I printed several items for each shop and fake toy money (which some of the children couldn't resist pocketing, even though they were only pieces of paper, eh eh eh!). Some of the kids acted as shopkeepers, displaying all their products on tables, while the others were the customers.

Here's the dialogue they used:

Customer: Good afternoon! (we usually have class after lunch)
Shopkeeper: Good afternoon! May I help you?
Customer: Yes, please. Can I have...
Shopkeeper: Here you are. Anything else?
Customer: No, thanks. How much is it?
Shopkeeper: It's € ..., please.
Customer: Here you are. 
Shopkeeper: Thank you! See you soon!
Customer: See you!

As you can see I recycled expressions I was sure they already knew (greetings, asking for something, etc.), and added new ones like 'How much is it?', 'May I help you?' and 'Anything else?'. This allowed the kids to think in a logical way about what they were saying instead of just learning it by heart.

First they practiced the dialogue by buying paper bread, paper flowers, paper fish, paper fruit and paper vegetables. Then to make it clear that this dialogue could be used for any kind of shopping, I let them buy real stickers and real candies… to their great astonishment! One even exclaimed ' "What?!?!? You are giving us real sweets for fake toy money?!?! "

They may be young but they're certainly not slow!


--> Quiero ler esta entrada en castellano

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.