Simon Says

Age: 7++
Material: learning about Verb
Organization: Whole Class
Time: 20-25 minutes
Aim: To practice or revise a new vocabulary set
Description: Children stand in front of the classroom. They learn a new vocabulary set
Preparation: You will need to prepare the words or verb vocabularies you want the children to learn
Procedures 

1. Stand in front of the class (you are Simon for the duration of this game).
2. Do an action and say Simon Says [action]. The students must copy what you do.
3. Repeat this process choosing different actions - you can be as silly as you like and the sillier you are the more the children will love you for it.
4. Then do an action but this time say only the action and omit 'Simon Says'. Whoever does the action this time is out and must sit down.
5. The winner is the last student standing.
6. To make it harder, speed up the actions. Reward children for good behavior by allowing them to play the part of Simon.

Note:
The danger of this games sometimes children does not want to stop playing this games

Reference
10 Best Games for ESL Teacher Abroad Link

Read More

Swap the Dot

Antonella—Italy
Age: 8-9
Times: 15 minutes
Materials: Circles of card. Each circle has either a color or a number on it. Use actual colors and write numbers (e.g. 5), rather than writing the words.
Organization: Whole class.
Aim: To practice recognizing and saying number words and colors.
Description: Each child has a card with either a color or a number. The teacher calls out a number and a color. The children with these cards must stand up, shout out their colors or numbers, and swap cards.
Preparation: You will need to prepare the card circles, depending on the number of children in the class. For 20 children, you will need 10 color cards and 10 number cards. The colors can be red, yellow, pink, blue, green, black, white, grey, orange, brown, for example.
Procedures

1. Ask the children to stand in a circle and give each one a card.
2. Practice the vocabulary. You can do this by pointing to each card, saying the word and asking the children to repeat; by saying a word and asking the child with the card to hold it up; by going round the circle and asking each child to say their word, and so on. 
3. Now play the game. Call out a number and a color, for example, five and orange. The children with these cards must come to the center, shout out their words and then swap their cards.
4. Repeat until all the children have swapped cards. 
5. Now ask each child to say what is on their new card.

Notes:
Once you have made the cards, you can use them to revise colors and numbers. You can also write the color or number on the back of the cards and use these to teach the written form.
Alternatives

1. If you have a larger class, you can add another group to the numbers and colors, for example, animals. The teacher then calls out three words – for example, ‘5, blue, tiger’ – and the children swap three cards.
2. When the children have all swapped cards, they can put them face down and the class can try to remember which child has which card.
3. Put all the cards face down on the floor (with the number/colour facing the floor). Children take it in turns to turn up two cards. If they can say the names correctly, they keep the cards. If not, the cards are put back in the same place.

Reference 
Crazy Animals and Other Activities for Teaching English to Young Learners Download PDF 

Read More

I Have It in My Name

By Issoofu Kanda Ibrahim—Niger
Age: All age
Times: 15-20 minutes
Materials: None.
Organization: Group work and whole class.
Aim: To practise/revise the alphabet and numbers. To practise listening for specific information, pronunciation of numbers and letters.
Description: This activity is a simple and fun way to revise the alphabet and numbers and is also quite cognitively challenging for children as they have to associate letters and numbers.
Preparation: No preparation is needed for this activity.
Procedures:
The teacher
Say a number and a letter, for example, ‘three, M’. Tell the children that if they have an ‘M’ as the third letter in their name, they should raise their hand. All the children who have M as the third letter in their name raise their hands and then take it in turns to spell out their name together with the numbers corresponding to the position of each letter.
For example:
Teacher: Three M Child: My name is Asma, one A, two S, three M, four A
Notes:
You might want to explain the activity in the children’s first language as the instructions are quite complicated!
Alternative

1. The children can take it in turns to choose the letter and the number.
2. The game can be made easier by calling out just a letter and asking the children whose name begins with that letter to spell their names, along with the numbers.For example: Teacher: OChild: My name is Oscar. One O, two S, three C, four A, five R.
3. Spelling games can be popular with children. A simple spelling game is to split the class into groups. Give Group A a word to spell. One child in the group starts to spell the word. If they get it right, award a point. If wrong, stop the child (perhaps with a buzzer sound) as soon as the wrong letter is given. The turn passes to Team B, who now knows where the mistake has been made. A child from Team B now tries to spell the word. If correct, award a point. If not, stop at the wrong letter in the same way and the turn moves to Team C. For example: Teacher: Team A: AustraliaTeam A: A–STeacher: BUZZ! Team BTeam B: A-U-S-T-R-E Teacher: BUZZ. Team CTeam C: A-U-S-T-R-A-L-I-A Teacher: Well done! Team C one point.

Reference
Crazy Animals and Other Activities for Teaching English to Young Learners Download PDF

Read More

Hammer Buttles

Weronika Poland
Age: 5-9
Times: 10-15 minutes
Materials: Flashcards and two plastic hammers.
Organization: Whole class.
Aim: To practise or revise vocabulary.
Description: After practising vocabulary items on flashcards, children show what they have remembered by locating the correct flashcard and hitting it with a plastic hammer.
Preparation: You need to prepare flashcards with all the words you want to practise/revise. You will need around 10 to 12 cards and two plastic hammers!
Procedures:

1. Ask the children to sit in a circle on the floor. Spread all the flashcards face up on the floor in front of the children.
2. Revise the words and the correct pronunciation of the items on the flashcards. The children can all point to the correct word first, then repeat the word, then individual children can say the word. 
3. After all the words have been revised, give two children a plastic hammer each. Say one of the words on the flashcards. The children locate the flashcard and hit it with the hammer. The first to hit is the winner. 
4. The children pass the hammer to the child on their left and the game continues. 
5. When the children know the words from the flashcards quite well, ask one of them to take over your role and shout out the words.

Notes:
This is a lot of fun and as long as you only have two hammers, it should be fairly easy to control!
Alternatives

1. If there is not enough space on the floor, the flashcards can be attached to the board.
2. If you do not like the idea of hitting the cards, children can stand on the cards or grab the cards (but this can cause arguments). 
3. In larger classes you can do steps one and two using the board, with the children sitting in their seats. You can then divide the class into two circles to play the game. In this case, you will need two sets of cards. 
4. If you do not have hammers, you can play an alternative version. Carry out steps one and two as explained. Then start to turn the cards over by asking the children in turn to identify a word and then turn it face down. When all the flashcards are face down, repeat the process. This time it is more difficult as children have to remember where the flashcard was!

Reference 
Crazy Animals and Other Activities for Teaching English to Young Learners Download PDF

Read More

Fly the Airplane, Pilot!

By Juliana Cavalieri Goncales—Brazil
age: 5-10
Times: 10-20 minutes
Materials: A piece of paper for each child.
Organization: Whole class.
Aim: To revise language from previous lessons.
Description: The children make paper airplanes. They then answer questions and if they get the right answers, they have the opportunity to throw their planes at ‘targets’ in the room to score points for their team.
Preparation: You will need to prepare a set of questions based on work you have been doing with the children. This might be some vocabulary, a story, some grammar.
Procedures:

1. Give each child a piece of paper and then show them how to fold a paper airplane. Be prepared to help children who struggle.
2. Let the children play for a short time with their airplanes. 
3. Divide the children into teams. 
4. Now decide with the children which parts of the classroom are going to be ‘targets’. Assign a number to each target. Easy targets will have a low number, for example the table could be worth 5 points. Difficult targets will have a high number, for example the trash can might be worth 20 points. The most difficult target should be worth a good lot, for example, 50 points for the clock. 
5. The children stand in lines in their teams at the front of the class with their airplanes. Ask the first question to the front row of children. The first child to raise their hand has to answer. If the answer is right, they get the chance to throw the airplane at a target of choice. If the airplane hits the target, the child gets the points. If the answer is wrong, another child can try to answer. All the first row must then go to the back of their lines so the next set of children can have a turn. 
6. The team that scores the most points is the winner!

Notes:
Once the airplanes have been made, they can be kept for the next time. You can have any number of teams, depending on the number of children in the class and the space you have. In a mixed ability class, try to make sure that children of similar ability are in the same row so that you can adapt the question to the children.
Alternatives

1. In small classes the children can play individually.
2. The teacher can create a running total over a week, month or term so that the game can be played frequently but for a short time only.
3. The children can decorate their planes or make modifications to make them fly better.
4. Maria Stakhovskya (Russia) offers an alternative to airplanes. She suggests that you bring in soft balls and skittles/objects to knock down. After answering the question, the children can try to knock down the skittles. They score points depending on the number of skittles they knock down. If you use objects, the children can try to hit the objects with the soft balls. If they are successful, they say something about the object they hit.

Reference
Crazy Animals and Other Activities for Teaching English to Young Learners Download PDF

Read More

Creative Chair

By Silvama Rampone—Italy
Age: 6-10
Times: 30 minutes 
Materials: A4 paper, felt tip pens, scissors, glue, dance music and equipment to play it on.
Organisation: Group work and whole class.
Aim: To practice speaking and writing.
Description: In this activity, children co-operate in drawing pictures, developing their creativity through collaborative work and also developing their communicative and thinking skills.
Preparation: You will need a piece of paper and a colored pen for each child.
Procedures

1. Ask the children to place their chairs in a circle. Give one sheet of A4 paper and a felt tip pen to each child. Use as many different colors as possible. Tell the children to write their names on the back of their piece of paper.
2. Tell the children to sit on their chairs and to draw anything they like on the piece of paper.
3. Tell the children that when they hear music, they have to start dancing around the chairs. When the music stops, the children should stop and stand behind the nearest chair and draw another picture on the paper on the chair they are standing behind. 
4. Start the music. 
5. When the music stops, the children go to the nearest chair (not their own) and add a drawing to the paper they find there. Continue this procedure until you see that the papers are quite full of drawings. 
6. Ask the children to go back to the chair they started from and look at the drawings. The children then take it in turns to hold up their pictures and describe what they see to the rest of the class. They can use the chunk ‘I can see...’ to introduce the pictures. You can help them with any new words they need. 
7. After describing their pictures, the children can then write a story, including as many of the pictures on the piece of paper as possible.

Notes
If you have a large class, you can organize the children into two or three circles.
Alternatives

1. You can extend this by asking all the children to hold up their pens. The child describing the picture can identify who did the drawings and say ‘This is Davide’s picture’ or ‘Davide drew this picture’ or ‘This was done by Davide’ or whatever phrase might be useful for your class to practise.
2.  The children hold up their pictures for the class. Play the game ‘I spy’. Children take it in turns to say ‘I spy with my little eye ...’ finishing the sentence with the names of objects in the pictures, for example, ‘I spy with my little eye a flower’. The other children have to find all the pictures with flowers in them and point to them.
3.  The children cut out the objects from their drawings. Place all the cut out pictures on the floor and ask the children to sort them out so that all drawings of the same object are together (flowers, houses, people etc).
4.  Put a large poster-size sheet of paper on the floor or on a desk and ask the children to stick the objects on it to make a display using singular and plural forms. Write on the poster (or ask the children to write) one flower six flowers (depending on how many there are on the poster). Draw the children’s attention to any irregular plurals and how they are formed.
5. Give each group a piece of poster-size paper. The children cut the objects out of their pictures and rearrange them on the poster, leaving some space at the bottom. When they’re happy with the layout, they can glue them onto the paper to make the new picture. The children can then colour the background, give their poster a title and write a short description of it at the bottom.
6. The children make an accordion book of their story by sticking the pictures in the right sequence. They then write short sentences for each stage of the story.

Reference
Crazy animals and other activities for teaching English to young learner book Download PDF 

Read More

Journal of Young Learners' Teaching Methods

1. Different Approaches to Teaching English as Foreign Language to Young Learners Download PDF
2. Young Learners' Language Learning Via Computer games Download PDF
3. Contextualizing Young Learners' English Lesson with Cartoons: Focus on Grammar and Vocabulary Download PDF
4. A Model of Using Social Media for Collaborative Learning to Enhance Learners’ Performance on Learning Download PDF 
5. The Effect of application of picture into picture audio- visual aids on vocabulary learning of young Iranian ELF learners Download PDF
6. Teaching English Vocabulary Via Drama Download PDF
7. Teaching English to Very Young Learner Download PDF
8. Applying a biopsychosocial perspective to address hand washing behaviors among young learners in Limpopo, South Africa Download PDF 
9. The Impact of Scaffolding on Content Retention of Iranian Post-elementary EFL Learners’ Summary Writing Download PDF 
10. Research Communiqué on the Use of Animated Cartoons in Teaching English to Children with Disorders and Disabilities Download PDF   
11. Encouraging young learners to learn English through stories Download PDF

Read More