How to Use Songs in the English Lesson So Children Get More Than a Good Time
There are thousands of English songs for children online, but pressing play and leaving it there only buys you entertainment. How to turn a song into a real lesson, plus a list of songs sorted by vocabulary topic.
Read the article →
The First 5 Minutes: Why the Warm Up Decides Whether the Lesson Works
The class has just come back from PE and nobody's head is in English yet. Five minute warm ups that pull the whole room into learning mode, plus a simple rule for picking the right one for the lesson in front of you.
Read the article →
16 English Praise Phrases for Teachers Who Have Worn Out Very good
Say Very good ten times a day and it stops meaning anything. Here is a range of praise young children understand easily, grouped by what each phrase is for, plus the one principle that makes children braver rather than just hungry for approval.
Read the article →
8 No-Prep English Games for the Last 10 Minutes of Class
The lesson ends early and the class starts to unravel. These English games need nothing but a board and your voice, they start in 30 seconds, and they work with any vocabulary topic in Grades 1 to 3.
Read the article →
20 Classroom Commands: Run a Whole Lesson in English Without Translating
Stand up. Open your book. Listen. The instructions you repeat every single lesson are the cheapest English your class will ever get. Here are 20 of them, ordered by how often you'll need them, plus a way to start using them that leaves nobody lost.
Read the article →
Teaching Children to Tell the Time in English: Always Start With the Hour Hand
Why children who can count perfectly well still can't tell you the time in English. The problem is reading the clock face, not the English, and this teaching sequence pulls the two skills apart.
Read the article →
Weather Vocabulary: One Question Every Lesson Until the Class Answers by Itself
How is the weather today? A one minute opener that teaches the whole weather topic without ever needing a lesson of its own, with the full word list and a gesture to go with each word.
Read the article →
Food Vocabulary for Grades 1 to 3: Teach It Through What They Ate for Lunch
Food is the easiest topic to teach, because children meet it three times a day. Here is the word list, the I like and I do not like sentence frames, and a restaurant game you can run in the classroom.
Read the article →
Teaching My Family Vocabulary: How to Get Past father and mother
Family is the first topic where children get to talk about themselves. How to tie it to their real lives, handle it sensitively, and build it up into an introduction they can say out loud.
Read the article →