Teacher Discussion Forums

I am going to begin teaching a phonics class to a 6 year old Chinese student. There will be 8 hour long lessons. Any suggestions on how to make these lessons interesting? Any fun games or activities?

I used "Let's Go" by Oxford in Japan. http://www.oup.com/elt/catalogue/isbn/8130?cc=gb It has a little boy or girl for each sound. A my name is Alice sort of thing. They had a little jazz chant for each sound that the children could skip to or sing along with. We used one book to cut out and make puppets out of the figures which we put on chopsticks and then used for puppet shows. The children said their name and as we got better at it they could say where they were from, what they liked, what they did and so on for their sound. A my name is Alice, I'm from Africa, I like apples, my favourite colour is amber, I am afraid of alligators, I drive an ambulance, I was born in August and I am an Arctic explorer. The course has wonderful flash cards and a teacher's manual.

How are you going to teach 44 sounds ln 8 hours?

I just remembered that someone put a whole phonics course on one of these threads. I will search and see if can find it.

If you type in "phonics" in the Search button above you will get a number of hits. Great discussions of why you might not want to teach Phonics.

This is one of the entries:

I saw Phonicball being used in a Chinese School in King Lam Kowloon. The kids were so involved and motivated. Email ESL Education Games at [email protected].

Try the materials here: www.englishraven.com/phonics.html

I typed "free phonics course" in Google and got a page of hits that all look interesting.

joriordan wrote:I am going to begin teaching a phonics class to a 6 year old Chinese student. There will be 8 hour long lessons. Any suggestions on how to make these lessons interesting? Any fun games or activities?

Teaching phonics in ESL is a step-by-step process that essentially familiarizes students with the sounds needed to produce English in order to develop their reading and writing skills.

Here is an article written by an actual teacher in China about "teaching phonics"

You won't teach 'phonics' in 8 hours..... This is a step by step process. There are loads of materials available online and colourful books too. I love Jollyphonics, Ladybird, Oxford, Osbourne etc.....


You can check out my site too for some fun if the class gets tedious, an hour is waaaaaay too long for a 6 year old.