Teaching Young Learners of English Dr Teaching Young Learners of English Dr. Michele Horowitz Levinsky College of Education ETAI Summer 2016 Ashkelon

Have Children Take an Active Role in Learning Child appropriate Less direct teaching Different learning environments Model language – provide experiences ENJOYABLE

ORAL SKILLS THROUGH COLLABORATION Children are social learners Dialogues Directions Questions Frame sentences Chunks of language

Themes and Topics Chunks Re-entry Experiential Visual Vocabulary through themes Vocabulary through storybooks Multi-dimensional – songs, games, listening, drawing, pretending, moving Chunks Re-entry Experiential Visual

Cross-Curricular / Language with Content Self-contained units (home, family, animals) Other disciplines (art, gym, music) Interface with home/family (home, family, activities, professions) validate home language and culture

PROVIDE CLEAR GOALS AND FEEDBACK PRAISE OFTEN AND IN DIFFERENT WAYS REMIND CHILDREN THAT THEY LEARN IN SMALL STEPS

ACTIVITIES PHONEMIC AWARENESS SOUNDS OF LETTERS DIFFERENTIATING LETTER SOUNDS LETTER SOUND PLACEMENT (BEGINNING/MIDDLE/END RHYMING AND FINGER PLAYS CLAPPING SYLLABLES COUNTING PHONEMES SEGMENTING AND BLENDING SUBSTITUTION DRAWING LETTERS – MATCH LETTER SOUND TO SHAPE

1. Supplement activities with visuals, realia, and movement. Young learners tend to have short attention spans and a lot of physical energy. In addition, children are very much linked to their surroundings and are more interested in the physical and the tangible. As Scott and Ytreberg (1990) describe, “Their own understanding comes through hands and eyes and ears. The physical world is dominant at all times.” • Use brightly colored visuals, toys, puppets or objects • Create a “Visuals and Realia Bank” • Use Total Physical Response (TPR) / Use TPR Storytelling 2. Involve students in making visuals Having children involved in creating the visuals that are related to the lesson helps engage students in the learning process by introducing them to the context as well as to relevant vocabulary items. Students are more likely to feel interested and invested in the lesson and will probably take better care of the materials (Moon 2000). 3. Move from activity to activity. Young learners have short attention spans. For ages 5–7, Keep activities around 5 and 10 minutes long. For ages 8–10, keep activities 10 to 15 minutes long. • Quiet/noisy exercises • Different skills: listening/talking/reading/writing • Individual/ pairwork/ groupwork/ whole class activities • Teacher-pupil/ pupil-pupil activities

BROWN BEAR, BROWN BEAR by Bill Martin, Jr. and Eric Carle   prereading activities say the author’s and illustrator’s names and write them on the board say the title of the book and write it on the board ask pupils if they can predict what the story is about—write predictions on the board brainstorm animals and colors—write these on the board     reading (If multiple copies of the book are not available, write the story on sentence strips or on a “bristol” so the class is able to see the words being read.) read the story to the class—invite the pupils to join in the “chanting” reread the story—invite pupils to echo what you read invite the class to read the story using the pictures as a guide invite individual children to read the story    post-reading activities match color to word and/or match animal to color using cards made by the teacher complete sentence with appropriate word (Brown Bear, Brown Bear what do you see? I see a _________ bird looking at me. Pupil completes the sentence with any color) make a class book substituting pupils’ names in place of the animals and colors -- the teacher uses this opportunity to teach pupils how to write their names or the teacher writes the names of the pupils language awareness importance of first and last sentences “a” indicates a singular noun adjective comes before noun (a brown bear, a red bird, a green frog) capital/lower case letters pronouns (you, we, us) “wh” question “What” sounds within the context of word focus on the letter ‘b’ (bear, brown, black, blue, bird) ‘r’ (red, children, teacher, bear, bird, purple) ‘sh’ (sheep, fish) ‘d’ (red, bird) Teachers may choose to teach the writing individual letters, whole words (colors, animals) or the frame sentence “I see a _________”. Pupils experiment with writing using invented spelling. When completing the frame sentence, pupils are encouraged to complete the sentence using a word they know, a picture or a word in L1. Examples: I see a grl. (girl) I see a ילדה. I see a I see a yalda. Michele Horowitz