Sprout English’s featured lesson this week is the Dangerous Aliens game from the Board Games section in the Games Room. This game, published by the Kinney Brothers, is a great one to play since Halloween is just around the corner. Spooky (and kind of cute) aliens will get your young learners into the Halloween spirit! (more…)
How many of you had a beloved childhood pet? My family always had one or more cats running around, and I am still a cat lover today. Since a lot of kids either have or want a pet, a discussion about pets is a great way to get your young learners talking.
This week’s article review is on 10 Popular Small Pets on Animal Planet‘s website. Some of the animals might surprise you. (Hermit crabs? Who knew?) There are a number of ways you could use this article with your class. (more…)
Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! It’s a zoo at Sprout English this week! Most kids love animals, so lessons and activities involving animals usually get their attention. Our Lesson of the Week is on Hippos, and materials writer Tara Benwell will be blogging for us on Thursday with a fun activity involving animals.
I thought I’d share one of my favorite animal activities to do with young learners. Students get practice with descriptive adjectives in this activity. 
They think they’re describing their favorite animals, but it’s actually a surprise personality profile! This activity always results in lots of laughs. (more…)
This week, Sprout English’s featured lesson is Hippos from the Animals section in the Discovery Center. This fun, six-page lesson includes discussion questions, a short reading full of interesting facts, comprehension questions, vocabulary exercises (including a matching exercise and a crossword puzzle), and a word maze. There is even an optional black-and-white title page for your young learners to color. (more…)
If you tried our Lesson of the Week about nations and nationalities, then a great follow-up would be to share these articles about different countries with your students.
Have your students look at “The Friendliest Countries in the World 2013” by Steven Sanders on Hubpages’s website. They’ll have fun checking to see if their countries are represented. Ask your young learners if they agree with the author’s choices. Which other countries do they think are friendly? How about their native countries (if you have a multi-national class)? How about other places they’ve visited? Have they been to any of the countries on the list? (more…)
Happy National Punctuation Day! This quirky holiday is celebrated on September 24th primarily in the United States, but is also gaining recognition in other countries, especially Canada. At Sprout English, we decided to do a blog post in honor of this holiday about…wait for it…punctuation!
I wanted to choose a punctuation mark that was difficult for English learners and native English speakers alike. Two things came to mind, based on my many years of teaching, and, more recently, editing: the en dash and the em dash! What are they? How did they get their names? When do we use them? I’ll blog about the en dash here on our Sprout English blog, and I’ll blog about the em dash over on our sister-site’s blog, ESL-Library. I hope these posts will be informative for you and your students!
What is an en dash?
An en dash is an elongated hyphen (about the length of two hyphens) that is used for specific purposes.
Here’s how the dash family looks:
Our Lesson of the Week, I’m from Canada in the Present Simple Dialogues 1 section of the Conversation Station, is a great follow-up from last week’s practice on the simple present. Students can improve their speaking, reading, listening, and grammar skills with this short exercise. (more…)
“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.” ~ Ernest Hemingway
How do you get students to listen? This question is especially important for young learners, who tend to have shorter attention spans and be easily distracted. Sometimes getting students to pay attention and listen feels like a never-ending struggle!
This week’s article, Say What? 5 Ways to Get Students to Listen, by Rebecca Alber on Edutopia‘s website, offers some fantastic suggestions on getting students to actively listen. (more…)
How do you usually teach the simple present tense to your students? Many textbooks break it down into parts. For example, a textbook will present just one use of the simple present, such as repeated actions. But in my experience, students grasp onto this verb tense more easily when an overview of all four uses is given right off the bat. After I introduce this tense using the method outlined below, I let students practice one part at a time. So they get the big picture, and then they practice one area in more detail before moving onto the next area. If your students are very low level, you could choose to present these uses one at a time. Alternatively, you can use the outline below as a review after students have learned all of the different uses of the simple present tense in English.
Let’s review the basic rules and go over the four uses. Be sure to check out the practice and fun activities suggested at the end of the post! (more…)
Infographics are such a fun way to share information. They’re generally easy to read and follow, and convey a message much more quickly than a traditional written paragraph. I think it’d be great to use them from time to time to teach a grammar point. But how do you go about making them?
This week’s article review is on How To Make An Infographic Using Piktochart by Katie Lepi on Edudemic‘s website. Katie gives an example of how Mia MacMeekin created an infographic using Piktochart. The steps, including research, design, and extras, are presented in…you guessed it…an infographic! (more…)
