Picture Game for Young Learners

Guess the Picture

In my Hidden Images slides, click the blue squares to reveal an image. Students try to guess the image before all the squares disappear. This is a fun way to review vocabulary and motivate students.

 ***If you would like to change anything in the slides or the Translation document attached to it, just go to file and make a copy. That copy you will be able to edit as you like.
***Don't email me to request access to edit. I will need this copy to stay the same.

Here is the link to Hidden Images

To change the images, simply click on a square and move it to the side. Then select the image underneath and delete it. Next, place your desired image on the slide. Then go to the ARRANGE tab and click ORDER to place the image behind the squares. 

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My resource book has a variety of topics are categorized in the order for teaching young learners from ages 3 to 8 years old. Teach with the ease of accessing a multitude of subjects.

Use it to cut your planning down by giving the majority of what you need to plan a great lesson along with tips to help you develop the lesson with seamless transitions.

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A Change of Plan: When Group Lesson Turns into a Tutorial

In teaching, you learn quickly that no plan goes accordingly. You could have an airtight lesson plan filled with objectives and clever transitional steps leading you to the next activity. Of course, you've planned brilliantly! It's what we had to spend a month to a year training to do. Yet, life always finds a way to wreak havoc on your plans. Especially, when dealing with human nature (specifically young children and teenagers. They have their own agenda.)

When your plan is failing.

For you, maybe, students have a very weak awareness of the past participle verbs during your present perfect lesson. Or a good chunk of students have missed lessons and you have to update the others to carry on to the next unit. 

Or worse, the internet shuts off. The computer decides to have a rest day and you are unable to use the tips and materials I have for you here. Ultimately, a complete nightmare with 13 to 25 students staring at you for instructions into what to do next.

Either way, disaster is known to strike. So prepare for the worst and pray for the best.

If you can't get anything to work out the way you've planned, its time to channel your creative flexibility.

As such, teachers must learn two things: when to divert from the plan and how to create an effective learning activity. Thus, welcome to my segment: A Change of Plan.

(Refers to the time before lockdown. Some nostalgia and words of wisdom for when we can go back to a normal classroom.)

I have an hour every Monday dedicated to B2 students who want extra practice in writing and/or speaking. Usually, I get anywhere from 3 to 8 students showing up. But last week I only got 1!

Personally, I can't stand tutorials. For one since it is only you and a student, it means you need a stack of material to work with. For two, you have to rely on one student to generate ideas that you guide them into. If you have a quiet or shy student, this can be like pulling teeth. And three, a tutorial turns out to be having a conversation for an hour. I don't talk to my closest friends for that long! Imagine doing that with a teenager. Plus, I'm sure its hell for the student too.

So what do you do when you find yourself in an impromptu tutorial?  I took my creative writing plan. I sat next to her and we did it as if I was a second student. That lasted 30 minutes and this is with me going off-topic and talking about random things in my life and in her life.

Then, before I wondered what tv series I could show her on my Netflix account, I had an idea. I went to a teacher with B2 students and asked to borrow a student for 10 minutes. 

Back in my class, the student heard the story and gave ideas to make it better. Our on personal Beta Reader. A Beta Reader is used with independent novelists who need someone to give notes on the content of the story. They say what works, what is good and what should be changed. I use it as a version of peer revision.

When my single student made the changes, I grabbed another Beta Reader. After the second round of changes, we had 5 minutes left so my student read the story aloud and we discussed what she thought about it.

Tutorial disasters avoided by stealing students from other sources. You may not be in an academy where this is easy to do. Or maybe you have private classes where other students are not in your area. In these cases, I suggest making Tic Tok or Powerpoints or memes with your one student in the publishing/independent producing stage of your lesson.

Either way, there is another activity put to in your teacher's toolbox which helps when the lesson plan has changed.

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ESL Teaching in this Age of Coronavirus

from pixabay.com Photograher: weisanjiang

Schools are closing worldwide. While some remain open, they need to take cautious steps to stay diseased free. For the other learning establishments, they are left wondering what to do now. We all realized that being on house locked down is not a forced vacation and learning still needs to be done.

So, what to do? The following is advice for schools who are closed/closing and for those who are still open.

We're Open

First of all, if you are in an area that has reported cases of the disease, you are on borrowed time. There is no telling when you will be pushed to close. Use this time to train your students, how to self-study. Show them how to review sections of their textbook or worksheets, by writing vocabulary from these parts and making dialogue/sentences with them. Practice grammar the same way or write drills like,

Example: (Write on the board)	Students’ Answers:
Present Continuous Verb: take       (+) Affirmative: She        (-) Negative:         (?) Question:       Short Answer:	(+) Affirmative: She is taking a pen.              (-) Negative: She isn’t taking a pen.              (?) Question: Is she taking a pen?  Short Answer: Yes, she is. / No, she isn’t

Also, take some preventive measures:

- Spray some hand sanitizer in every students' hands as they enter the classroom.

- Have students sit in rows to limit contact.

- Use online games where students shout out or use hand gestures to give their answers. (Example: Using the multiple-choice in a game from eslgamplus.com, students put up one finger for the first option, two for the second option and so on.)

-Instruct students to cough into their elbow, not their hands and don't let them go to the toilet, except for an emergency. And always have them wash their hands afterward, adding a spray of purell before they come back to class.

-More writing and independent practice need to be incorporated into your lesson plan.

-Speaking practice should have students a foot away from each other.

- Encourage elbow taps when they wanted to say a good job to other classmates or take on the "Demolition Man" hand clap

Yes, we have reached this level. No matter how silly it may seem. It keeps us safe.

Closed Down

School closure makes learning suffer. But some things can be done about it. You don't want students to come back as if its the first day of school with 3 months of summer wiping out their memory of English. Remember if you don't use it, you lose it. So here are some ideas to help homeschool students during this difficult time in our history.

-set up a Google Drive account. Email parents the link when you have placed videos, worksheets or scanned page assignments on it. Have students scan or take pictures of their work to email to you.

-transition your class into online teaching. There are many platforms to broadcast an online course. Here are some free ones:
           *Moodle
           *Zoom
           *Udemy
           *Rcampus
           *Peer 2 Peer University
           *Thinkific
           *Teachers Pay Teachers
           *Google Hangouts
           *Google Classroom


- you could even set up a YouTube channel for lectures or links to other videos to teach learning points in your lesson.

It will take from half a week to a week to set up and get familiar with the system but once that hard part is done, it's easy sailing.

Either way, in this day in age, there is no excuse not to continue teaching. A good teacher knows when to adapt. So, with the right preparation and attitude, you can make this temporary crisis not completely stop our way of life. Get out online and teach those students English!

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Let me know how it goes. Write a comment about your experience with planning and/or what happened when you tried my method.

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