Drawing students' attention

How to draw our students attention and improve their interest in the task? 

It is very difficult to get the children's attention, specially through an L2, a language they don't understand at all and they don't have any personal reason to learn it. When this attention doesn't exist, then, it's very difficult they learn the language. 

An effective way to draw their attention is having in mind their interests, what they like. 

Today I'm going to explain you an example that happened in my P5 English class (preschool education, learning an L2) when dealing with the clothes vocabulary. 

In the second session in which we were working these vocabulary, I showed them some clothes flaschards. In order to learn the vocabulary and to practise the listening skill I said to them some clothes and they had to point them. Some kids were interested in the activity, but others weren't paying attention. They said to me: 

"Teacher, I'm bored.." or "I don't like this game..."

After that I decided to create some new flashcards, but this time a bit different, using their favourite films characters. Their interest and attention in front of the task increased a lot. The task was exactly the same but the fact that the clothes were worn by their favourite characters changed everything. Everybody was perfectly following the activity, and in addition, they didn't want to stop playing. Even some kids started to describe their favourite character's clothes on their own: 

"Teacher, Elsa is wearing a blue dress!" "Gru is wearing a scarf" "T-shirt?... Peter Pan!!!" "Sadness has got a jumper!"

At the end of the game we had worked clothes and colours. I'm sure some of them learnt more vocabulary in this 10 minutes game, than during the other 50 minutes left, just because of the game presentation. 

When we personalise our students learning the results are always much more effective. The material used and the way we present them is really important. 

Emma.

Learning the body parts with monsters

Hi teachers, today I have some interesting activities to learn the body parts through monsters to share with you. They are successful in preschool and 1st grade, even though you can adapt them at the level you want by adding more or less difficulty. 

BUILDING A MONSTER: 

As you can see in the photo, students are given some body parts and a monster body. The activity aim is to build a monster to learn the body parts names. In order to do so, we have some variations or difficulty levels: 

a) The teacher guides them to create a monster  by saying them what parts of the body the monster has got. 

For example: "Build a monster with three green eyes, one mouth, three blue legs and two pink arms"

b) The kid builds his/her own monster and after that s/he has to explain to the teacher or their classmates what parts of the body his/her monster has got. 

c) Children work in pairs, one student gives the directions to create a monster to his/her peer. When they finish they change the roles. 

Skills worked: listening and speaking

Key competences into practise: 

- Linguistic and audio-visual competence

- Cultural and artistic competence

- Mathematic competence 

- Learning to learn competence

- Autonomy, initiative and decision taking competence

Multiple intelligences in use: 

- Linguistic

- Mathematical

- Visual 

Other vocabulary required: numbers, colours, adjectives (if we want to put more difficulty), ...

Expressions or verbs needed: "It has got..."

  

DRAW YOUR OWN MONSTER: 

In this activity the students have to imagine and draw a monster, they have to put them a name and complete the questions, answering how many eyes, mouths, arms and legs their monster has got. Moreover, they have to write a big and small body part their monster has got. 

Skills worked: Reading and writing 

Key competences into practise:

- Linguistic and audio-visual competence

- Cultural and artistic competence

- Mathematic competence 

- Learning to learn competence

- Autonomy, initiative and decision taking competence

Multiple intelligences in use: 

- Linguistic

- Mathematical

- Visual 

Other vocabulary required: numbers, adjectives: big and small. 

Expressions or verbs needed: "It has got..."

They really enjoy dealing with monsters and they have had lots of fun doing the previous activities. Children were motivated which is essential to learn English. In addition, they worked the creativity and imagination an important aspect in the society we live in. 

Emma.