ESL preschools for native English speakers?

Preschool Students

I currently teach University and High School, yet I am constantly posting games and ideas for preschool? Why? I believe that by teaching students two (or more) languages at a young age we are really giving them one of the best gifts we can. I am not the only one who thinks so! This is an article by Jordan McPelt which discusses the positives of ESL preschools for English speaking students. 

Why English Speaking Kids Should Attend a ESL Preschool

 

As the world gets continually smaller through social media, technology, and all the different governments overturning for change, there are so many benefits to being bi-lingual. In fact, many people are trying to learn another language themselves because they can see some real benefits to being able to communicate with a larger amount of people in the world. There are quite a few benefits to learning another language while still young in age, even as young as pre-school. If you have the option to send your children to a preschool that offers English as a second language, you should consider this school.

Lucky number 7, but is earlier better?

Optimum Age

Many people don’t realize that when a child is learning to talk, their brains are wired and ready to learn a language quickly. Professionals debate on when the window closes for the brain’s optimum point of learning a language, but most believe that it is around age six or seven. Some debate that it may go into puberty, but no matter when they believe it ends, the truth still stands that once you are past this point it is not only harder to learn another language, but even things like perfecting the accent will never come. It is considerably easier for children to learn another language and the earlier they get started, the better. Preschool age is still in these formative years and having exposure to other languages, even if it isn’t the primary language spoken in the home, so attending one with at least one other language being spoken can be very beneficial for a child.

Building the basis for future learning

Building It Up

When a person learns to speak another language, it actually becomes easier to learn more languages. This is because there are plenty of similarities between languages. The brain is also more flexible in terms of having a history of adapting to multiple words and phrases for the same thing. This helps to pave the path for more languages spoken throughout life.

Exposure to Cultures

When attending a preschool that has multiple languages spoken, there are other differences that are going to naturally come along as well. The countries of origin that these children and their families come from have many different traditions, holidays, and ways of doing things. This is because culture is deeply rooted in these families, even if they have been out of their country for years. Having your child experience all of these differences gives them a wider view of the world and lenses in which to view it. When your child learns about other cultures, they broaden their understanding by realizing their way is not the only way to do things and can learn to appreciate differences in others.

Benefit in Other Areas

Immersion programs have long been a preference for parents who opt to have them brought to their

Language skills help math

schools. When using these programs it is often a few subjects that are taught in the foreign language rather than the entire day of that language only. Research shows that these types of programs have academic benefits like higher math scores and even more sharp critical thinking skills. If you are worried that it may benefit in some areas but decease other areas, like native language skills, rest assured that children are flexible and do not have any negative affects shown in their native language speaking. It almost seems as though during these formative years where learning a language is optimum that the brain is wired to pick up and learn many different languages.

Keeping It Up

In order to keep up the language that is learned, it must be kept up. Learning a language while you are young does not mean you will be able to speak it 25 years down the road. Constant exposure to the language is required to keep it up, so the benefits extend far beyond a year or two.

What do you think? Would you send your student to an ESL preschool?

Oh No! Poor Snow!

Don't hate me! Maybe it is because we don't celebrate Thanksgiving down here, or the start of the red cups at Starbucks, but I am in the winter spirit! As an early gift to everyone here's a PowerPoint of a winter adaptation of one of my favorite activities for little ones!
The activity is usually called, "Poor Joe" but in this case I changed it to "Poor Snow!" we use the exact same chant except we practice on a snowman.

I encourage you to make your own snowman using body parts and clothing you want to review with your students, but this gives you an idea.

If you are planning on practicing winter clothing here's another activity you may like to try.
Happy Holidays!

Participle Phrases Alphabet Book

Every year my Advanced I students learn participle phrases.

Part of them practicing is to create a children's alphabet book using participle phrases (e.g. A is for Alligator: Looking beautiful in her tutu and ballet slippers, the alligator danced across the floor..)

In an effort to get my students to see that their work is about more than just a grade, I had hoped to send copies of the book to other teachers who could read it in their class. No cost would be present for teacher other than promising to send back pictures, letters, drawings or videos from their class so my students could see that their assignment did affect others.

This would not happen until the fall (probably November, but maybe October).

The book would NOT be anything professionally made. If I can get school approval for some budget, it will be bound with wire binding. If not, it will be stapled. Illustrations will probably be drawn by the students.

If you are interested please let me know by filling out the following form:



If you have any questions please leave a comment below.

Thank you so much for your time!

House (Learning the rooms)

Sample House

OK, last post for a while about these boxes I PROMISE, but this is by far my FAVORITE way to use them in class and the one all my teacher friends always LOVE.

I did in this Korea with my 3rd and 4th grade EFL students, and in Spain with my EFL students (preschool and first grade loved it). Of course, I have adapted the activity a bit each time to best suit the students but the basic steps are the same.

Step 1: Hand out a piece of paper that looks like the picture below. The four middle squares should be different from one another to assure students can easily see the differences (with higher level classes you could probably just give them a blank piece of paper)..

A basic Template for the House

Step 2: Follow the steps from http://eslcarissa.blogspot.com/2013/06/opposites-origami-added-pictures.html or http://eslcarissa.blogspot.mx/2012/06/organized-opposites-orgami.html and have your students make their own box.

Step 3: Have them unfold the box and show them your sample "house." They usually get pretty excited at this point (or at least the younger ones do).

Step 4: Let them draw their own additions to make each room its own. I teach: Bedroom, Bathroom, Kitchen, Living Room.

Step 4: (Alternative) If your students shy away from drawing give them a page of household idtems and let them cut and paste those objects into whatever room they like. I don't suggest using catalogs for this as they will probably have items that are too big. This free download includes a sheet of objects they can cut and paste which I've made sure are the right size..

Step 4: (Alternative) Make this a listening activity. "Put a refrigerator in the room with squares on the floor," "Put a cupboard next to the refrigerator," etc.

Step 5: Give them small toys (like Lego people) and let them play. They are little; they like to play! Let them use their English. Every few minutes shout, "FREEZE" and call on a student to say where his friend's toy is, "In the kitchen."

Step 5: (Alternative) You can also do another listening activity (with prepositions too if you like!) "Put your finger in the kitchen," "Put your finger on the toilet" and listen to them shout, "Ewwwwwwww."

FAST ALTERNATIVE

Complete House Template

If you want to get straight into the games and not bother with the making it, give them a "complete" house that you photocopied. Then they just need to fold and star having fun!

All of these templates and the house items (adjusted from http://openclipart.org/ are available for free download here: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Make-a-House-and-practice-Rooms-and-Prepositions-719846) but my art is really not that great, so you can probably make something better on your own :-)
If you have an alternative that you use when teaching about the house or try this with your class I'd love to know! Drop me a comment below!

Cootie Catchers and Fortune Tellers- Listening Activity (A step by step guide on how-to make a cootie catcher)

1. Any piece of paper

2. Even recycled paper

Making a cootie catcher or a fortune teller can be a fun activity for an EFL class to practice many grammar points and vocabulary.

This is also a great activity because it can use recycled paper (and who doesn't have tons of old worksheets, lesson plans and memos that are begging to be recycled?)!

You may remember making these when you were younger. Since students may already know how to do this to make this a really effective listening activity don't tell them what you are going to do, just walk them through the steps.

2. Fold a triangle

3. Cut off the extra paper

 1. You'll need a piece of paper. It can be any size, but your standard 8.5 by 11 seems to be fine. If it is too big or too small it becomes a bit cumbersome to make and play with. If you are giving them a square piece of paper then you can go straight to step 4 skipping steps 2 and 3.

2. To make a perfect (or almost perfect) square instruct your students to "Take the bottom right corner and fold it to the upper left. Make sure that the sides are ever. This means the corner won't match the other corner. That's OK" A perfect square makes things easier, but "nearly perfect" squares will be fine.

4. Unfold the paper

5. Fold another triangle.

3. "Take your scissors and cut off the extra paper that is not covered by your triangle"

4."Unfold the paper" This should now be a perfect square with a crease going from the bottom left to the upper right. I marked the crease with pink so you can see it more easily.

5.  "Now take the bottom left corner and fold it to meet the upper right corner." If your students did steps 2-4 correctly the corners should match perfectly, if not that's OK. Some students who are perfectionists may want to re-cut and fold their paper now. If you have time allow it, otherwise insist it will be fine and move to step 6.

6. Unfold the paper.

7. Fold a corner to the center

6. "Unfold the paper." Now your creases should have made a big X on the paper. The second crease has been highlighted in orange to make it clearer.

7. "Now we can see where the lines meet in the middle. Take the bottom right corner and fold it to the middle." With younger students I go around and put a big dot in the middle so they can find it without a problem.

8.  "Now take the bottom left corner and fold it to the middle." By now your students get it and steps 9 and 10 are a snap.

8. Fold a 2nd corner

9. Fold a 3rd corner

9. "Take another corner and fold it to the center." If you want to be specific walk them through the corners "upper right, upper left, etc." again, but at this point it usually isn't needed.

10. "Take the last corner and fold it to the center." In a perfect world if you have done everything right then all of the triangles should meet in the center without overlapping or seeing the lower layer. That's the ideal to be aiming for. However, if that doesn't happen it will be fine.

11. "Now we have a square so flip it over and do the same thing."

10. All the corners!

11. Flip it over.

12. "Take the bottom right corner and fold it to the center."

13- 15.  "Fold all of the corners to the middle." This is a little harder that the last few steps since the paper is thicker now and a bit more difficult to fold. Be sure to get them to fold it well. Creases make it easier later.

16. "Fold the paper in half vertically so that all of the triangles are on the inside and you can see squares"

12. Fold to the center.

13. Fold to the center

17. "Unfold and fold it in half again this time horizontally"


18. This part takes a little finesse. At this point the best you can do is try to explain and then help the students that are struggling. "Put your fingers inside the squares" Some people do this differently. I've always had each finger get its own compartment except for the pinky which shares with the ring finger. It's easier to do this with their dominant hand.

19. "Now, spread your fingers out and get the paper to open a bit" This part can be tricky, but once students see others doing it they can usually find a method that works for them. If not, assign helpers.

14. Fold to the center.

15. Fold to the center.

20. "Enjoy making the paper move" Especially with younger students making the paper open and close is a tough motor skill. Have them practice and enjoy their handmade toy.

So there you go how to make a cootie catcher in 20 easy-ish steps! I have done this project with students as young as 5 years old. They struggled a bit with nice creases and I had to re-do some of them, but overall they did pretty well. My high school students realized what we were doing right away and whipped through this in about 10 minutes.

16. Fold in half

17. Fold in half again

I advise that you fold along with the students so they have an example.

I also suggest that you go around as they are folding to be sure everyone is on task. It is easy to rescue one mishap, but if you miss it when it happened it can be hard to figure out where they went wrong.

As you can see this activity can be adjusted to use more ordinal numbers, transition words, etc. I kept it simple by mainly using directions (left, right center) and shape words they should know.

18. Put your fingers inside

19. Pop the squares!

 What to do now? If you want to go straight into another activity, check out the Cootie Catcher Speaking activity for several variations appropriate for ever English level.

If you only had enough time for this activity today tell your students to put their names on it and save it for later.

This is one of the items I can be found making at banks when there are rowdy children. After, we use them as puppets. You could do this too in your class and decorate the "face" to tell a story.

Optional: My creature!

20. Practice moving

If you are studying body parts tell them to add, "12 eyes, 3 ears and 2 noses" to their creature and see what they end up creating. To the right you can see my 6 eyed, two tongued, purple haired creature (with a green nose of course).

Below you can see a few more professional options. If you'd like a creature prettier than my creature on the right, check out the Fortune Wookiee! If your students are still into story time read them Arthur and the Cootie catcher. This is a great story about not believing everything they hear (and then they can make their own), or (just to prove I am not crazy) there's a book designed to teach vocabulary using cootie catchers!

The possibilities are endless and I'd love to know how you use them in class!