Material design

As Susan House points out, one of the advantages of creating our own material for the classroom is that we can adapt them to a specific situation, because although we might teach to different groups with which have the same level of English, each group is unique and unrepeatable. Let's consider some resources:

• Flashcards: are without any doubt the most reusable teaching resource, there is an endless list of potential activities and ways to use flashcards in the classroom. Make sure you take into account the class size as the bigger the class the bigger the flashcards should be; another thing to consider is the way in which you will use them. If you use them to introduce a new topic, for instance, A4 flashcards will do, but if you want them to play a game like 'Heads up!' it would be better to customize small flashcards.

Ideas:
-Show and say: Hold up a flashcards and ask the class What's this?  the students respond, e.g. A banana (students can take turns in holding up the cards)

-Find the pair: Students work in pairs, each with a set of flashcards, they lay them face down on the table and take it in turn to turn over two cards trying to find a pair, the student that makes the most pairs is the winner.

-Hide and Seek: Hide an agreed number of flashcards in the classroom, write the words on the boards as a guide. The students have to find the cards, when all the cards have been found the students stand up and say which cards they have. The student who finds the most cards is the winner.

-Describe and Guess: Take a flashcards from an agreed group of objects, without showing it to the class, describe the object on the flashcard. The class must guess which object is being described.
-Tell the story: Choose a scene from a story, as you tell the story to the class, replace the key vocabulary with flashcards which you hold up. The students call out the missing words. Make sure that the key vocabulary is repeated and see if the students can anticipate the missing word before you hold up the flashcard.

Flashcards - Parts of the body

• Posters: Susan gives us two examples of posters:

-Collages: Choose your key language, students look through old magazines for examples of the key language and glue them onto card, making an abstract design. Different groups work with different colours and produce.

-Information boards: Choose your key language, students work in groups collecting and displaying information on their poster e.g. wild animals. Each group is given or chooses a different wild animal. Give all the groups a set of defined tasks, e.g. 1. Where does this animal live? 2.What does this animal eat? 3.Describe your animal.
Make sure you give enough language examples on the board.

 

Poster - Shapes.

   Susan House. Series Editor: Paul Seligson.1997. An introduction to teaching English to children: Richmond publishing