“I’m fine, thank you.”

One of the most dreaded questions in every English teacher’s arsenal is: How are you?

From an extremely young age, students are asked this question and given the magic response “I’m fine,” which then grows into “I’m fine, thank you,” and stagnates at “I’mfinethankyouandyou?”

(And we are all aware of the vicious cycle known as andyouism.)

The great news is that, with young learners, we can attempt to eradicate this epidemia before it begins. Today, we bring you a new part of your class routine: “How are you?”

With children who are three and four years old, you can already get them telling you how they really are, instead of that they are “fine.” (And if this doesn’t have you jumping on your chair, read on…)

Super Simple Learning makes a wonderful set of flashcards that you can print, laminate, and use every day for this part of your class routine. Find them here.

After singing a hello song and making a circle, we review the emotions flashcards and make hand play for each one that they have learned. So, “I’m good” is one thumb up, “I’m great” is two thumbs up, “I’m wonderful” is reaching up to the sky, etc.

Once we’ve reviewed, we ask the student on our left, “How are you?” and (especially at the beginning) show them the options on a flashcard. They answer and then ask the next student (lots of times, we model the first few times with, “Ana, ask Carlos, ‘How are you, Carlos?'”). Go around the circle before moving on to your next activity.

With three and four year olds, we generally use “good,” “great,” “wonderful,” and “not so good.” With older students, you can incorporate even more emotions.

When a student answers with the dreaded “I’m fine, thank you,” we often try to mimic their answer, but exaggerating their style (very fast, very quiet, very sad, etc.) It gets them laughing and very interested.

When they discover that saying “I’m fine, thank you” is way more funny than “I’m good” or “I’m great,” then we incorporate high fives for those students that answer correctly on the first try.

Soon, you’ll be knowing more about your students’ emotions and hearing less of the dreaded “I’m fine, thank you. And you?”

Our Favorite Teaching Toy

Everyone has their favorite activities in the ESL classroom (hangman, a game, perhaps a toy doll), but we have found that we reach for one toy over and over for many different ages and purposes: the ABC foam blocks. These are the kind that we use:

Chenille Kraft WonderFoam Learning Blocks, available on Amazon.com

These blocks can be used from ages 1-10 (and probably older!). Here are a few ways to incorporate these activities into your lesson:

Very Young Learners:

• Name the colors
• Count the blocks
• Build a tower (4 blocks per student) and then make them count to 5 before knocking it down
• Do different actions with your blocks: put them on your shoulder, on your hand, on your foot, on your leg, on your tummy, on your head. Count to three and then tip your head so that the block falls on the floor (a big hit!).
• Read the numbers
• Race to the end of a room to get a specific color out of the pile of blocks (great for when your students are so hyper that your lesson plan is sinking!)

Young primary students:

• Group the colors, numbers, letters, etc.
• Identify the pictures (show them quickly so it’s not so easy!)
• Guess the color (number, etc.) with your eyes closed
• Build a big tower, letting each student add one block, until it falls down. The student to place the last block is out!
• Play hangman with the pictures on the block.

Older primary students:

• Write one of the words on the blackboard from the blocks and have the group give the student that is “it” hints to guess the word. Obviously, the student that is “it” can’t look at the blackboard and the group can’t say the word on the blackboard.
• Hide the blocks around the room and have them write prepositional statements about where they find the blocks (“The block is between the book and the pen.”)
• Use them as conversation starters (“This block has a penguin. Penguins are animals that live in cold terrain. They eat…”)
• Play “I’m going to Grandmother’s house and I’m taking,” and the block that they pull out of the bag is the letter that they have to use.

As you can see, if we could only invest in one teaching toy, it would definitely be this one! What’s your favorite teaching toy? Leave us a comment and let us know!

Beautiful ESL Christmas Activities to Display

It’s that time of year! We are rehearsing “Jingle Bells,” we are juggling exams and grading, and we are trying to teach our students a bit about our English-speaking cultural holiday traditions! At our school, we focus on Christmas, although many of our activities have a general winter theme so that we don’t interfer with anyone’s cultural or religious followings.

Today we’re sharing our three new activities for this year!

1. Very young ESL learners and The Christmas Tree

One of the first things that we teach students when studying about Christmas is the tradition of a Christmas tree. This can tie in nicely with their science courses (the parts of a tree; deciduous vs evergreen; trees around the world; etc.) and the vocabulary is easy enough.

We use the Christmas carol O Christmas Tree as a sing-a-long in the class. Then, each student gets to decorate an ornament (which we found on Google Images and pasted to card to make them sturdy) and hang it on our big primary tree.

Copyright lessonplansesl.wordpress.com

Copyright lessonplansesl.wordpress.com

Finally, help them read the lyrics to O Christmas Tree that you’ve printed out on a piece of paper. Add a color-by-number Christmas tree to half of the paper and fast finishers can color another beautiful decoration!

Copyright http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com

2. Dextrous ESL learners and The Recycled Snowman

This activity is great paired with a cute story about a snowman or playing in the snow. We found three appropriate stories in English in the youth section of our local library, and Amazon.com and Abebooks.com has lots of possibilities! (Don’t forget that you can download lots of ebook options if you have a projector in your class!)

Then we make a little snowman out of a recycled toilet paper roll (ah, the neverending craft supply box!) and a recycled sock. Googly eyes and white stickers that can be painted as buttons and then stuck on quickly help this activity to run smoothly. This requires a bit of preparation, but this website walks you through it. These are super adorable but not for tiny fingers!

Copyright lessonplansesl.wordpress.com

Copyright lessonplansesl.wordpress.com

3. Late Primary Students and The Snowflake Wonderland

Moving away from the traditional themes of Christmas and more towards the theme of winter wonderland, this activity allows us to talk about the science behind snowflakes. Why do snowflakes form (lesson on solids, liquids and gases)? How many sides do snowflakes have (lesson on geometry and symmetry)? Where can we see snowflakes (general winter vocabulary lesson)? Have you seen any films with snowflakes (our students are going crazy – in a good way – when they sing “Let it Go” from the film Frozen and then gap fill the lyrics)?

As a craft, they can make their own paper snowflakes and create a winter wonderland in a room or corridor. This website teaches you how to make them (depending on the age, your students might need a bit of help with the last step before cutting).

Copyright lessonplansesl.wordpress.com

Copyright lessonplansesl.wordpress.com

All of these activities will please parents and other teachers, decorate your learning space (think less bulletin board duties for you!), and give your students a great use for their pre-holidays energy.

What’s your favorite Christmas activity? Share it with us in a comment! And have a happy holiday season!

“Phrase of the Week” for older ESL / EFL learners

In our school, one of our favorite secondary-level activities is the “PHRASE OF THE WEEK!” This is such a fun opportunity to make students laugh, expose them to authentic English and involve them in the class.

I saw this picture on Facebook and it made me realize how perfect puns would be for the “Phrase of the Week”:

By the way, did you know that you can follow our blog on Facebook? Check out https://www.facebook.com/esllessonplanssantaeugenia. That’s ESLLessonPlansSantaEugenia on Facebook!

“Phrase of the Week” is super fun and super easy. All you have to do is google “English idiomatic expressions” to come up with a full database of phrases that will take you through the whole school year.

Every Monday, we give the students the “Phrase of the Week.” You can write it on the blackboard and ask the students to try to guess the meaning. For example, “an arm and a leg.” If it’s very difficult, you can write it in a sentence: “This shirt costs an arm and a leg.” If you have a student guess the meaning, great! If not, you can explain it to students.

A great activity is to ask the students to write their own definition in their “Phrase of the Week” section of their notebooks. Ask for three or four volunteers to write their definitions on the blackboard and then formulate one acceptable class definition. Have them copy the class definition below their own definition in their notebooks.

(If you have extra class time, you can always put up 10 definitions and have the students vote for their favorite! To keep things fair, you can write them or have students exchange notebooks so that the author is a mystery. The student with the most amount of votes can win a prize, like a positive point or a homework pass! This will keep students super motivated to learn the “Phrase of the Week.”)

But don’t start there! Continue incorporating the “Phrase of the Week” throughout the week. Here are a few ways to do that:

• Pop quiz: What’s the phrase of the week?
• Bonus point on exam: Write and explain the phrase of the week.
• Come to class, say hello, call on a student, and ask “What’s the phrase of the week?” immediately.
• If you notice that the class is getting a bit unruly, ask “What’s the phrase of the week?” and have them choral repeat a few times before continuing with the lesson.
• Towards the end of the year, have a contest in groups or individually to see who can write down the most phrases of the week. Give a prize to the winner!
• Come into class and write a phrase of the week in a different way (back to the example of “an arm and a leg,” you can write “This shirt is very expensive.”) Ask the students to say it in a different way, using a phrase of the week.
• Let the students come up with a phrase of the week! Assign each week to a different student and let them present and define the phrase of the week.

This is a great ice breaker activity that will get your students motivated and your class off on the right foot! The bonus? It’s been shown in our classrooms to get students’ attention immediately and quiet them down – quite a feat for Spanish secondary students!

Tips for organizing small groups

If you have the benefit of a language assistant in your classroom, working in small groups can be a great alternative to traditional teaching methods! It can also help get your students excited about language learning at any age! This post will give you some tips on how to organize small groups in the classroom setting.

One of the most important parts of working in small groups is to be organized and plan ahead. It’s great to say “We’re going to work in small groups!”, but how will you break students into groups? Will the groups stay in the classroom or go to another appropriate learning environment? How will you keep track of what group’s “turn” it is for small groups? How will you deal with students who do not adapt well to the small groups environment?

These are all questions that you will need to consider when you are contemplating using small groups in your classroom. Try to have a defined idea of what exactly you will be doing and what you want to gain from small group work so that you can answer these questions as best as possible!

One of the most daunting tasks of small group work is forming the different groups with new students, whose abilities you may not know very well at the beginning of the class. We’ve had great experience with using a short English / Science (which is given in English at our school) test on the first 2-3 days of school to place students into groups.

The idea is that the short test should build on things that students have been exposed to, perhaps in previous levels (or in their lives, their preschools, etc.), and preview what they will see during the year. We usually show students ten pictures and ask them a question, thus the test has ten points. We group students by how many points they have (the first group has the students who have scored least amount of points, and so on). This is a good system because it allows you to tailor the activities to the students’ needs and levels, but it’s also nice to mix up the levels if you find that works better for your class. That way, your more advanced students can help those who need a bit more encouragement.

(Note: We also allow ourselves the freedom to change students around in case the test was not an accurate measurement of a student’s ability. Sometimes they are nervous and are actually quite better than what the test shows, in which case they would move up a group.)

The entire test should take about 1-2 minutes to complete. It’s helpful to ask students “What is your name?” and “How are you?” before beginning to help them break into English. You can explain that you are going to show them pictures and ask them questions. We’ve found that using a soothing tone of voice and smiling helps shy learners!

Here are ten pictures and questions that you can use to organize your small group! (All of these are geared towards ESL / EFL young learners, ages 4-6).

1. Is this a boy or a girl?

Copyright http://www.sweetclipart.com

2. What color is this?

Copyright http://www.clipartpanda.com

3. What do you see?

Copyright http://www.clipartguide.com

4. What is he wearing?

Copyright http://www.clipartpanda.com

5. Does he like fish?

Copyright http://www.clipartbest.com

6. What is she doing?

Copyright http://www.clipartbest.com

7. Who is this? (point to Mommy)

Copyright http://www.sweetclipart.com

8. Where is the fish?

Copyright by Winchester Lambourne Etsy Shop

9. How is he feeling?

Copyright http://www.mycutegraphics.com

10. What’s the weather like?

Copyright http://www.acclaimclipart.com

So now that you’ve got your groups, be sure that you explain to them how small groups will work. That way, you can avoid twenty-something students screaming “What group is today?!” when you walk into the classroom.

It’s helpful to hang a small poster in the classroom with the group names (you can even get them to vote on their favorite names!) and the students in each group. You can put a bit of velcro on each group and move an arrow or other cute symbol around each group so that the students can tell what students go next in small groups! This will help things move a bit faster at the beginning of class as well.

Small groups can be a great way for students to get more individualized attention in the language-learning classroom, and these tips will help you organize great groups from the start! What have you found to be the most effective small group tactic? Leave us a comment!