[sm99uk]

Hi,

I teach English as an additional language to young learners (all primary) in the UK. Some have no English whatsoever and I'm struggling to come up with fun activities to get them to start speaking/learning English.

My classes are one-to-one and I have limited resources (what I can provide myself) and am often working in a corridor or shared working space (eg a library) and so cannot really do 'noisy' activities like songs, etc. A course book isn't a great idea either because often the children are of different levels (although my main concern at the moment is the ones with zero English).

Any tips on how to construct a whole lesson and what kinds of resources to use and where from?

Thanks in advance!

[Muriah]

Constructing a lesson would depend on what your goals for the student are, but maybe I can give you a few ideas for activities to use. If you have or can make small picture cards, there are a lot of quieter games you can do with them. For example:

Play a board game by placing your pictures (or words if the student can read) in a snaky line (there is also a good board game maker on this website). Make it more interesting by adding some pitfalls, like Go Back Two Spaces or Miss a Turn. Then take turns with your student moving your piece, using the word you land on in a sentance, or just saying it if the level is low.

Play a guessing game with three cards- show them to the student, and then place them on the table and mix them up. Have them guess where each card it. Let them have a turn hiding the cards, saying "Where is the (vocab word)?"

Coloring: Print a coloring page off the internet, and give the student instructions, such as "The balloon is blue. The boy has on a red shirt." You could hold a copy of the same picture, and let them give you instructions as well.

I hope these help!

[toriaet]

Another great game that I played loads with young learners in small groups and that use the picture cards already suggested... is where you place them all on the table face down and take it in turns to turn two over- if they're a pair then the person who turned them over gets the pair if not they're turned back over and its the other persons turn. The one with the most pairs wins. The key is to make sure that the learner says whats on the cards as they turn them over. You can also have pictures on one half and words on others so, for example, they match a picture of a table with the word table.

Board games are great as well!

Hope that helps!

Vicky

[sm99uk]

Hi,

These are great ideas but I need to be able to turn them into an hour's lesson and that's where I'm struggling. Keep them coming please!

My main aim with all of these children is to give them as much language and literacy skills (although literacy is less of a problem) so that they can access the curriculum with the other (English) children.

[EngliPatrick]

I hate to push my site in such a blatant manner but there are about 100 elementary school English games on it and they are geared at teaching English.

Yes, they are geared for Japanese students but they might give you some ideas.

. Homepage - Elementary

[mesmark]

It's always easier to structure lessons around target language or some language goal. So, if you could give us an example of what you want to teach, maybe we could give you some better ideas.

However, my conversation school one-on-one lessons generally run in the following pattern:
1. review
2. review game
3. reading/phonics/worksheets for review of previous lesson(s) and or introduction of new phonics rules + practice
4. Introduction of new material or practice of new material
5. activity with the new material

So, the lesson is broken up and I get all the main things in there a little at a time. We don't make any great progress in one single lesson but make a lot of progress over several months.

4-5 is the main point of the lesson and I choose different activities for different target languages. Some games are better for some forms and it's also good to keep shuffling the games around so they don't get bored with any one game.

I'm not sure if that was helpful or not ...