Job Discussion Forums

canadiangirl14 · Joined: 06 Jul 2003 Posts: 6 Location: Saskatchewan, Canada

I've never taught English overseas before and I was just offered a job teaching children around ages 4-9. I was wondering if I should bring along some English alphabet and shape flashcards to help them learn. Is that a good idea or would easy stuff like that be holding them back? (the TESOL course im taking next week will probably answer this, but I'd like to know before that) Thanks all!

khmerhit · Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2003 2:07 am Post subject:

No, No, excellent idea. Buy em or make em up, and if you make em up you can draw on both sides for double the value. Very Happy

Montie · Joined: 22 Apr 2003 Posts: 10

Agreed, they are excellent. Also think about doing rainbow letters i.e. write a letter and go over it several times in different colours. The same can be done for words. Get a few sets of plastic letters and play games with them. Drawing letters and turning them into pictures helps too e.g. turning h into a house, s into a snake etc or drawing a picture of the starting letter sound e.g. children write 'f' and draw a fish to go with it. Writing letters on each others back and guessing them. Painting letters or drawing them in sand or flour, making play dough letters.
The idea is to get the letters into the long term memory. Once kids know about 15 letters get them writing 2 & 3 letter words and go from there. Make sure know the sounds of each letter and they form the letters correctly going from the top to the bottom. For older kids who know their letters give them the 1 minute test. That is write the letters of the alphabet as many times as you can in one minute starting with small letters and then capitals. Marks off for poorly formed letters and letters in the wrong order.This helps them to become automatic and frees their short term memory to work on other things. Practice for 5 mins everyday and test them once a week. Get the kids to keep a graph of their results.

By the way, thanks to all those who helped me with my assignment on building staff commitment in English schools in China a few weeks ago. Some of you gave some very helpful and interesting insights. Sorry I didn't thank you earlier.
Montie

Peter · Joined: 29 Jan 2003 Posts: 161

On your level:
Bogglesworld and Genki English on the net
Stock up on Maisy Mouse VCD discs; Lucy Cousins is the author.
Large size picture books with a bit of mayhem in them: The Harry books;about a little dog; Curious George, a monkey. These are "old" books, b een around for a long time.
Learn to play 3 chords on a guitar D ,A and G and you can play ALL childrens songs, tapes and discs are not always suitable