Back to Basics:

Teaching primary school kids

By: Oksana Kharenko

The main point

“The main objective of teaching young learners is not to produce geniuses, but to develop boundless abilities of a personality thus to add more happiness to the existing world.”

Recommendations for teachers

• Teachers must use different kinds of pictures and visuals • Use method of Total Physical Response • Use different teaching games • Vary the activities throughout class • Use activities that require class repetition • Provide positive motivation

Recommendations Continued

• Use communicative approach • Use activities that allow children to develop creative thinking – Drawing, craftwork, dramatization • Use authentic materials – Songs, rhymes, chants • Use activities that correspond to your class level

4 basic teaching skills

• Listening • Reading • Speaking – Vocabulary • Writing – Grammar

Listening

• Listening is the ability to comprehend and understand other English speakers • Start with the basics of listening then work your way to higher levels of listening • Teachers need to speak mostly English since they don’t hear English a lot out of their lesson • Phonetics Example: • Pattern – sentence- What is your name? word- what sound- /w/ *children must repeat vice versa

Reading and Listening games & activities

• Listen and Do (clap, mime, matching, drawing) • Listen and Repeat (songs, poems, rhymes, doing actions, chants) • Listen and understand (fill in the blank, sentences in order, find the incorrect word)

Reading

• Reading is a skill that should be trained everyday through • Text level should be increased as students master reading.

• Students should aim for perfect intonation and phonetic levels.

• Students should be able to find new information through reading by a full understanding of the text.

• Reading should be done everyday and used to train the other skills. • The same activities can be used to train reading as are used to train listening

Vocabulary/Speaking

• Children possess A1 level of English after primary school • The concept of teaching vocabulary is providing relevant speech in everyday communication

Steps for vocabulary training

• Introduction- a teacher should not translate but use visuals, songs, rhymes, miming, gestures • Training- Form an automatic pattern on a phrasal level • Communicative practice- Must provide this language practice through different skills not just speaking

Vocabulary games & activities

Vocabulary Training • Listen and repeat • Play vocabulary game • Solve crossword and puzzle • Find the right word and read it • Write the words with missing letters • Draw the words • Fill in the blanks in the sentences • Put the correct word instead of the picture your opinion frame Communicative Practice • Describe a picture • Speak in pairs • Re-tell the text or stories • Write a short story • Role games

Writing

• Start teaching writing with teaching letters, words, sentences, short stories • The aim of teaching writing is for students to practice handwriting, spelling, and written speech.

Writing activities and games

Handwriting Exercises -Match capital letter with the small letter -Put the words in alphabetical order -find the letter among the words -Match the words to the picture -make up a word out of given letters -decode the word Spelling Exercises -write out: the words with the same pronunciation but different spelling (for, four), words starting with B or C, colors, seasons -fill in the gap -language games: crosswords, puzzles, word search, word scramble -translation - dictation: highest level of activities

Writing activities and games continued

Written Speech -make up story using the given words -write a letter (First introduce the letter pattern then finish the letter followed by writing their own letter) -describe object and people -create short stories -write an essay (History

Grammar Training steps

• Reception (introduction) – Listen and show, listen and clap, listen and point, look and choose, listen and repeat • Accuracy (training) – Complete, replace, look and say, look and answer, look and guess, play a game, fill in the gaps • Fluency (communicative practice) – Describe, talk, retell, compose, write, dramatize

Biblioghaphy

• Биркун Л.В., Колтко Н.О. Комунікативні завдання для початкової школи: перший рік навчання. В 2 ч. – Х.: Вид. група “Основа”, 2003.

• Don Dallas, Linda Pelham. New Let’s Learn English 1.- Longman, 2007.

• Пахомова Т.Г.: Методичні тези.- Черкаси.- 64с., 2009 • Пахомова Т.Г., Вакуленко О.О.: Навчаємо молодших. Teach and Enjoy. – Черкаси, 2006 • Паценкер І.Б. Серія “English for Me”. Комплект наочних посібників для дошкільних закладів і початкової школи. – “Ранок”, 2009.

• Posnayko. Kids’ magazine.

• Reference guide for the teacher of English:-Київ: Редакція загальнопедагогічних газет, 2004