[cbharris01]

This response is for people who are still looking for some ideas on how to teach months of the year, I realize this is way too late to be of any use to the original poster!!!

Key month game

After drilling / reviewing the months of the year, try this game to make it stick in thier heads. Between introducing the vocabulary, a little bit of drilliing, and this game, you've easily got the first 20-25 minutes of the class planned. Put all 12 months on the board in order. Have the students make pairs and get out one eraser.

Usually I draw two funny faces on the board with the number 2 next to it, then draw an eraser with a 1 next to it. This keeps the students from making a pair and each getting thier own eraser out. Clearly say "2 students, 1 eraser." This is optional but helps a lot especially when the homeroom teacher isnt coming to your rescue with a translation.

Once the students are ready demo the rules. Make sure you have your own eraser and put it on a surface within grabbing distance. Circle one month of your choosing, for example March, and ask the students what the circled month is for oral practice. First, blurt out a different month: "OCTOBER!" Make a move towards the eraser but stop and say "no", and point to March. Next say another month besides March: "APRIL!" but then stop before you grab the eraser, pointing to March again. The third time, say "MARCH!" and grab the eraser as quickly and frantically as you can. Hopefully this will get across the point that when you say the circled word they race to see who can grab the eraser first.

The key to making this game fun and suspenseful is faking the students out. Say the first few months quietly, then yell one out really loud. Changing the tone and volume of your voice often times makes for some hilarious mistakes. I also like to lead them on, saying a few months then faking a sneeze, or saying some unintelligible mumbo-jumbo (just make sure it doesnt even closely resemble one of the words or youll have some confused students.)

For added variety/vocabulary, have them put thier hands on thier head the first few rounds. Always say "put you hands on your......... head!" Then after a few times change it up to make sure they arent just relaxing into the routine, aka "put your hands on your.......... shoulders!" Also a good way to elicit participation from quiet students. They dont have to know the body part they can just point to where they want to put thier hands next.

You can easily master this within a class or two and my students seem to like it. Also good to use with numbers, letters, basicially any list or large vocabulary set.