Any primary teachers?

[alexis]

I am in Ningbo teaching 3rd and 4th grade primary at a private boarding school. I thought I might get the chance to teach something but no such luck. The teachers tell me to just sing songs, play games and talk about U.S. culture. I have tried everything I know, tic tac toe, hang man, twinkle twinkle, but they know it all.... any suggestions? They have textbooks but the teachers teach them these and I am not suppose to. I would really appreciate any help. Alexis

[George61]

Teach 'em clothing, parts of the body, shopping items, animals, birds, countries,vehicles,sports,etc.....A ball is useful..they can learn everything about balls...catch, throw, roll, toss, chuck, spin, drop, bounce, etc. There is also left, right, behind, beside, above, under, blah,blah,blah. Doing stuff like this, you can also re-inforce sentence structure......"I can catch a/the ball" Did he/she catch the ball?"..."can you catch a ball?
Shapes are good to, as are colours
That should keep you going for a while.

[con's fly is open]

To the tune of "London Brige is Falling Down":

Head and shoulders, knees and toes,
knees and toes, knees and toes,
Head and shoulders, knees and toes,
eyes, ears, mouth and nose.

You are all touching said parts, of course. Do it normal speed, then in slow motion, then super fast; the latter will have them in stitches. When they get tired of this song (which takes an astonishingly long time), vary the words and surprice them:

Head and- elbows! Legs and neck...

They'll pick up body parts like you won't believe.
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If You're happy and you know it clap your hands.
Stomp your feet, turn around (spin 360 degrees while going "Eeeeee!"), touch your nose (pinch your nose and say "Honk! Honk!"). This, again, will take ages to get old. Then add Slap your face "Pia! Pia!"
Last line: Do all 3/4/5! (clapclap, stompstomp, honkhonk).
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B-I-N-G-O. Sing, erase the O from the board, sing again but clap hands in place of the O; erase the G, sing "B-I-N-(clap twice). By the end just clap five times (well, 15,really). Gets the blood pumping and wears excess energy out of the little bastards.
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Touch game: assuming you have pictures of the words you teach, put the new ones on the board, then say "touch... rabbit!" Singly, or in pairs as a race.

[alexis]

My kids are 4th grade (5th grade in U.S.) they know all the songs and body parts, etc. Does anyone have any other ideas for more advanced kids that I can not use a textbook with. Their teacher already teaches them English. I am just there to talk about culture, sing, etc. Help!!!!!!!!

[con's fly is open]

Teach them sports: the names, the equipment.
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Teach them geography: dig up a world map, train them on the names, then show them where it is. If you're really ambitious, once they've got a dozen or so down, make an Asian puzzle, with cutouts of each country, and have them assemble and name them.
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There's always vocabulary: nouns and verbs. If they have enough, write an opening sentence on the board like "A dragon/robot/very big monkey lives on the hill/on the school/ in the river, and he is very sad/angry/hungry/naughty." Give the cleverest student a word like "bus/river/sun/trousers", and tell him to come up with the next sentence; then move along, student by student, and make a story. You'll need a Chinese TA, because the students will need the odd word translated for you.
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Alphabet game: You say "A: apple" then point to the next student and say "B!"; next student "C!" etc. When this proves easy, make a word chain: "Mary! A!"; write her word on the board, say apple, circle the last letter, then say "David! E!". Play until it gets lame.

[Ruth]

How big are your classes? I teach grade 3-6 primary kids at my flat. They love the 'hokey pokey'. Not sure that would work in a large classroom environment. We also play BINGO - games I have made with pictures of words I want them to learn. Again, wouldn't work with a large class.

In my (high school) classes at school I have over 60 kids (80 in one class). We make teams and play a version of hangman as spelling review. I use words or phrases from their text book, putting a line on the board for each letter. Each team guesses one letter for one point, until they can identify the word. If they want to guess the word, they may, for a total of all the points, but if they guess incorrectly, they lose the corresponding number of points.

Head and Shoulders is great, as Con suggested. Here are 2 more verses I use:
back and stomach, hips and hands, etc.
elbow, forehead, neck and cheeks.

Once they have learned body parts, you can try to trick them by saying 'touch your nose' and you model touching your head. My private kids love this, but you can't do it until they REALLY know the correct words. Have the kids 'be the teacher' by coming to the front and having them tell the other kids what body part to touch. This gets them talking. Same thing works with things in the room - point to the window, touch the wall, turn on the light. With your right hand, touch your left elbow. Get them into body contortions.

Dictation works also, if you keep the language at their level. As the others suggested - anything about our culture, especially holidays. Halloween's coming.
Gotta go - my private kids just arrived.

[alexis]

On Monday and Tuesday I teach 4th grade primary. They range from intermediate skills to more advanced depending on the chinese english teacher. I always have a TA in the room who helps alot. They seem to know the holidays, all the nursery songs, they greet each other very well, etc. I feel so stupid because all I can do is play hangman and tic tac toe. It isn't that I want to make a big deal out of the teaching I just want to know what to do that isn't remedial. I really appreciate your help. On Wenesday and Thrusday I teach 3rd grade. They are easier because they do not know "everything" like my 4th graders. Any more games you can think of??

[Crippler]

How is their oral English? Get them to write what you are saying, get them to read out loud, get them to spell on the blackboard in teams, HAve them do small group discussions and give oral reports on their findings, etc.....

[Ruth]

Dictation. Dictation. Dictation.

Get a copy of the words they have already learned and will be expected to learn this year. That's the vocabulary you should be using. Now, create short passages from these words, telling about American culture (which is what they want you to do). Read the passage once. Then dictate it. The students write what you say. You write each sentence on the board after you have dictated it and the kids self-correct. Or you can have a student write the sentence on the board as you dictate. As you correct his/her sentence the others self-correct. If you are in a particularly masochist mood, collect their dictations and correct them yourself. (I only did this a couple of times - so I could get a sense of what they were really hearing.) They may know the word 'where' to read it, but when I say it, they write 'rare' or 'were'. They need lots of practice at listening. A good way to find out what they are hearing is to have them write it down.

If your class sizes are small enough you can role play going shopping, ordering at a restaurant, going to the doctor, etc.

My high school kids don't know about all the holidays. Even if your kids do, we teach on them every year in America, why not here? Repetition is okay. Do a lesson on Halloween and hand out candy. I'll bet you'll be their favorite teacher!

PM with your email address and I'll send you some lesson plans.

[con's fly is open]

Ghost stories for Halloween! Show them The Ring in class. Then tell them that the woman in white is a teacher who comes after naughty students.

[alexis]

Someone had posted some great links to sites on the web about teaching primary and now it is gone? Can you please repost? I had no idea that it could disapear. Help!!!!!

[Hamish]

It is gone and I have no idea why.

It wasn't the brains.

We ain't that smart.

Hmmmmmmmm.............

[MK]

That was me. When your next post was just another plea for help, I assumed you hadn't found the links useful and I deleted 'em.
I am a touchy bastard, and I had had a bad day...either that or I was drunk...probably both, in fact.

Now that my little tantrum has got me some attention, I'll post them again...hope they do help!







teaching young learners

Teens stuff

teaching with limited resources

Worksheets for beginners

Greasy Spoon idea cookbook - Kids

Young Learner's ESL EFL English Lessons, Games and Activities

Bogglesworlld – lots of young learners stuff here

Musical English Lessons

[alexis]

Thank you!!! I am so much looking forward to going through them during holiday. Thanks again, Alexis

[Dr. Gonzo]

Can't help on the primary teaching front Alexis, but I'd love to hear how the whole kid relocation thing has gone, considering I was one of your first respondents to this query on daves, which directed you to this forum.
If that makes sense!

[con's fly is open]

Couple more things I thought of:

Write down the words to a sentence they should have learned the previous class, each word on a seperate piece of paper, then give one to each student and get them to stand together, holding the words up in the right order. The first time will be pandemonium, then they'll get the idea and speed up the process. Does wonders for sentence structure, and they have no idea that they're learning.
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I got this one of Dave's: write the letters of the alphabet across the top of the board, then divide the class into two teams (three or four if your class is huge). The first student from team one must come write a word, any word, on the board; if he spells it correctly, give his team one point for each letter in the word: apple is worth 5 points, while antidisestablishmentarianism would score 28. After every correct spelling, erase the letter the word began with; no student may write a word beginning with that letter thereafter.
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Write a word or phrase with a variety of letters in it- "grandmother" works great. Give them 5 to 10 minutes to come up with as many words as possible using the letters in, say, Grandmother: Am, Them, Dragon, etc.

[ilunga]

Some good ideas on this thread. Very handy.
These are some games I've played with grades 4-6 over the last seven months or so...

Blockbusters - This is a British T.V. programme. Not sure if you have it in U.S./Aus/Canada... 'What K is an animal from Australia?' I always make sure the answers are in their vocab at the back of their English books.

Spaghetti - Buy some fromt he supermarket. Noodles might work. Get them to cut the little pieces up and make words. They love it.

Take them outside and give them a list of letters. They've gotta find something in the school playground beginning with each of the letters.

Magic squares - Draw an 8x8 grid with a different (hidden) monetary value in each. Two teams, they choose the square (a5, c2 etc) and they must answer a question to get the points. 'Name five animals Chinese people don't eat?' Harder than it sounds. They go crazy if they pick a 100 square or a big fat zero (I think I might have got this one from Seth).

Test them on opposites. Two teams, first to guess the opposite gets the points.

Wriggly worm - Draw a big worm full of words on the board and ask the students to pick all the words out.

Emotions - draw different faces on the board. When you think they've sunk in, get a student at a time to draw a specific face - surprised, tired, upset....

I spy, Wordsearches, crosswords....don't rush them though and make stupid mistakes like I did.

Run to the board, find the word (concentrate on a specific letter to make it harder), write the word. They love all that stuff.

[Ruth]

Thanks for sharing. I'm stealing some of these ideas for my private students and I believe I can adapt them for high schoolers. It's really a privilege to be able to teach a 'fun' class to the high school kids. They are under such pressure from their other classes. A 'game' class is a welcome relief.

Monkey King - just cause we don't take time to acknowledge you doesn't mean your ideas aren't valued. Thanks for the links. Here, have a drink on me