ideas needed!

steve-o-nz · Post by **steve-o-nz** » Thu May 18, 2006 3:56 am

Hello all, just found these forums and they are great! I look forward to becomming a regular poster on here!

I have a elementary school lesson for grades 4 and 5 coming up on Monday teaching age. For example the key sentence is "how old are you".

I have been looking around on the web for ideas and activities although i cannot find anything of use. Im stuck in a rut on this topic and cannot seem to get out.

If anyone could lend a hand on what they have taught, or games and activities that could work well with this topic would be much appreciated.

Kind regards

Steve-O

pipit · Post by **pipit** » Fri Jun 16, 2006 7:19 am

have you ever visit www.genkienglish.com? try it. it contain lots of ideas about teaching english

rusmeister · Post by **rusmeister** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 5:52 pm

When you have kids of different ages one quick activity is to arrange chain asking, where one kid asks another, who replies and in turn asks someone else, around the classroom, quickly. With younger kids you should designate who they ask. Shifting to 3rd person, ask about family members. ("Do you have a brother? How old is he?" etc...)

Sally Olsen · Post by **Sally Olsen** » Tue Jun 20, 2006 4:18 pm

It is also fun to get the kids to line up according to age and then according to months. You can put the highest age they could be at one end of the chalk board and the lowest at the other end. They have to negotiate where they will stand and should do it in English of course. This would be a good time to get them write their name on their appropriate day on a calendar so you can celebrate birthdays as they come up. You can make a school year calendar and then put in other holidays you intend to celebrate as well as local ones. Good chance to talk about how other countries use the terms Grade 4 and 5. In Mongolia the kids are 11 and 12 in those grade and in Greenland they are 9 and 10 while in Denmark they are 10 and 11. It is also fun to make paper children by having them trace around a friend full length and cut it out. You can add these statistics of how old they are, what colour their eyes are and so on as you practice various things. They can even draw their favourite meals in their stomachs and various body parts, their favourite animals at their feet or in their hands (fish in a bowl for example) and different children can express different emotions with their faces (sad, happy, scared, etc.) You can paint over the paper children and add clothes and can have them in differnt positions (running, jumping, dancing, sitting, etc.) I usually put them up along the roof above the boards and take attendance by pointing to the paper child first and then the real child for a week or so.

musica5 · Post by **musica5** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 2:28 am

This is away from the age theme but connects with the large pictures of the individual students. You could extend this into measuring how tall they are, the circumference of their heads, measure each others arms, spans etc. Also draw around their feet and make a graph with them all in a row. All these actiivities develop vocabulary around, taller than, shorter than, bigger, biggest, long, thin, wide, wider widest etc, Then questions such as how many people are taller than _________. How many are shorter than_________/ All this math vocabulary is good stuff.

Pam
http://www.pamseslclassroom.com
Free CD of 17 ESL songs, lesson plans etc.