Have you tried our Spotlight lesson with your young learners this week? We featured Maze Craze: five simple, fun mazes for very young learners. The object of those mazes is to get the food item to the animal. When I came up with the idea for these mazes, I automatically thought of a hippo eating a watermelon. The explosion of pink goo is something to see! I wanted to include a video of a hippo eating a watermelon for your students, so I asked my sister, who works at a zoo, to film the video. It’s a little blurry and shaky because it was filmed with her iPhone, but I hope your students enjoy it!
Author Archives: Tanya Trusler
Maze Craze
When we were at the TESOL 2014 convention in Portland this year, we got a lot of requests for materials for pre-K, K, and the lower grade levels. Among the materials we’ll be developing is this series of low-level mazes. Introducing Maze Craze: simple, fun mazes that young learners will love!
Our designer Robyn created five lovable characters that your students will want to help feed. The object is to get the food to the animal, which they can then color. If they can’t do the mazes, they will still enjoy the coloring!
These mazes will tie in nicely to a theme on animals or food. Or just do them anytime for fun! (more…)
Articles
Many languages don’t have articles, so English language learners often struggle with using a or the. Over the years, I’ve found that presenting articles (also called “determiners”) in a chart like the one below helps students see which one to use and why. When students are getting frustrated, remind them that it could be worse—they could be learning a language like French that has male/female and singular/plural articles, too!
Chart:
Skateboarding
Today is skateboarder Tony Hawk’s birthday, so it’s a great day/week to try our Skateboarding lesson! Students will enjoy learning about this popular sport and Tony Hawk’s contributions to it.
This six-page Discovery Center lesson includes discussion questions, a short reading full of interesting facts, comprehension questions, vocabulary review (including an odd-one-out exercise and a crossword), and a word maze. There is even an optional black-and-white title page for your young learners to color. (more…)
Animal Families
Mother’s Day will be celebrated on Sunday, May 11, in many countries. In honor of this important day, we wrote and designed a NEW lesson on Animal Families!
In this eight-page Word Bank lesson, students will learn the names of mother, father, and baby animals of certain families such as lion, cow, chicken, deer, etc. They will practice this vocabulary through several fun, colorful activities, including a picture dictionary, matchup, word choice, word search, word scramble, and spelling bee. This lesson finishes up with discussion questions so that your students can practice using the vocab in context. These activities are suitable for individual, pair, group, or class work—the choice is yours!
The animal family pictures are also available as flashcards at the end of the lesson. For some ideas on how to use flashcards in class, check out 9 Ways to Use Cards & Flashcards in Class.
More Mother’s Day Materials:
- Mother’s Day Video Fun by Tara Benwell
- Mother’s Day Fun Facts by Tanya Trusler (more…)
Mother’s Day Fun Facts
Mother’s Day will be celebrated in many countries this Sunday. Are you doing any Mother’s Day lessons or activities in class? Most teachers will want to discuss this holiday with their students, so I thought I would blog about some fun, interesting Mother’s Day facts that you can share with your class this week!
What are some interesting Mother’s Day customs around the world?
- Children in many countries give their mothers flowers (especially roses and carnations) on Mother’s Day. Some children buy gifts for their moms such as chocolates or jewelry.
- Children in the US and Canada often give their mothers breakfast in bed. (more…)
Pronunciation of “ph” & “wh” Words
English spelling and pronunciation can cause a lot of difficulties for English language learners! That’s because English spelling often doesn’t match the pronunciation. English has gone through many sound changes over time, and we’ve kept some of the older spellings that don’t reflect the current sounds. Did you know that while many languages only have 5 vowel sounds (a, e, i, o, u), English has 26 vowel sounds? No wonder it’s tough to learn how to spell and pronounce English words correctly!
Two tricky sounds are those spelled with “ph” and “wh”. “Ph” is pronounced as an /f/ sound, and “wh” is pronounced as a /w/ sound, and neither include the /h/ sound! This week’s Spotlight lesson was on
“ph” & “wh” Words, so I decided to record the words from this lesson on the blog this week. (more…)
“ph” & “wh” Words
The English spelling system is one of the most difficult of all the world’s languages. Our spelling of a word often doesn’t match the sound of the word. Two such sounds are “ph” words and “wh” words, such as “phone” and “whale”. Luckily, we’ve got a lesson devoted entirely to the spelling and sound of “ph” and “wh” words! Your students will be writing and pronouncing these words correctly in no time.
This 16-page phonics lesson can be broken up and done over several days so that your learners get as much practice as they need. It starts off with writing/spelling and speaking exercises and moves on to other grammar points such as Prepositions and Wh Questions about time and place. The colorful images and variety of activities mean your students won’t get bored! (more…)
Adjective Sentence Patterns & Suffixes
English language learners study the Be verb early on, and they learn about adjectives soon afterward—adjectives usually appear in simple sentences with the Be verb (e.g., I am happy and That is a big house). This week’s featured lesson was on Adjectives that describe feelings, so I thought a blog post on the grammatical structure of adjectives would be useful for your students!
What do our students need to know about adjectives? First of all, we should explain that adjectives are used to describe nouns. Adjectives can describe the shape, color, age, details, etc. of a noun, and they can describe the emotions associated with a person or thing.
There are two things to “master” about adjectives: the sentence patterns and the suffixes. Once your students learn both, they’ll have adjectives in the bag! (more…)
Adjectives
How are your students feeling today? The useful “Be verb + Adjective” structure is something students usually learn early on that allows them to express feelings. Our Adjectives lesson in the Basic Grammar Structures section of the Grammar School gives students plenty of practice with this structure! (more…)
