|
|
|
|||
 Printable Lesson Plans Genki English CDs:  Volume 1  Volume 2  Volume 3  Volume 4  Volume 5  Volume 6   New CD Vol. 7   MP3 Songs |
Take any problem in the World and it's invariably caused ( or made worse)
by a lack of education. Too many kids hate school because it's too boring.
The aim of Genki Learning is to have all subjects in all countries taught
in a fun, engaging and effective way. There are already a few million kids
benefiting from this, and even a whole country where the government has
put it in all their schools. But there's still a long way to go!
While I'm on the road you'll hear about my travels & workshops, and
when I'm doing studio work I'll keep you up to date with ideas, updates
to the site and some of my favourite teaching resources. So if you want
to find out what's it's like behind the scenes or how & why I do what
I do or even if you're just nosey or a bit bored, have a read.
I'll update the diary as often as I can, so keep coming back. And of course
whilst I'm away, the office staff are always ready to send off your CD orders just as soon as you send them in!
Subscribe in an RSS reader -
Previous Entries are here
A big new update is underway. The biggest change you’ll like (hopefully!) is with the new songs pages. Now instead of just mini cards and the occasional worksheet, you’ll be able to access the A4 cards in pdf format, colour and black & white mini cards, individual lesson plans in English and Japanese plus printable spaghetti, islands and snakes & ladders games for just about all the themes.
With thousands of files involved in the update there are bound to be a few slips and mistakes so if you do find any broken links or things that don’t work I’d be very glad to hear about them.
Once everything settles down the whole site should be a lot easier for you to use with everything available to print out from one page. So have a try at your favourite lesson page and let me know what you think!
Here’s a nice tool I found whilst looking around the net for a free D’Nealian font.
Just pop in your students’ names (one at at time of course) and you get a nice worksheet like this:
Terrie’s Take has an article this week showing how the worldwide obesity problem has well and truly reached even Japan. I can quite sympathise, during the Winter I get seriously fat from sitting down doing computer work all day. Of course in the Summer it all falls off (well most of it), from doing Genki English everyday, especially the intensive “bootcamp” workshops.
It used to be a few years ago that some teachers wouldn’t jump around or use physical actions in English class. They’d raise their nose and say “Oh no, not in my classroom”. Luckily, along with the “Let’s order at McDonalds” type lesson plan, this attitude has pretty much vanished as teachers realise how much of a problem obesity is for kids.
The trick now is to introduce a more active lifestyle across the curriculum. This may mean introducing Nintendo Wiis in PE class (yeah, it’s happening in the States), or the other way round, introducing more active activities in other classes.
If you do find yourself with a class of kids who could do with a bit of exercise, or fancy shedding a few winter pounds yourself, then here are my top 5 Genki English activities, they work for me every year!
1. Good Morning song - do the super jump version!
2. When, When, When - more jumping
3. Rocket Launch
4. Do you like…? Karuta game - just for the kids this one.
5. Gorilla Game
Usually I recommend teachers take a break or just keep an eye on the kids when they are playing a super active game (that’s why I look energetic in workshops when in reality you are doing all the work!), but joining in is fun.
Plus of course all the songs on the site all have gestures and actions. Getting the kids to move around is something that will seriously improve their well being, and take the strain off health services around the world, plus of course on this site they’ll get a big bonus of being able to speak English at the end of it all!
As you may have read in the newsletter this month, I’m currently in Portugal. For no particular reason other than it’s the warmest place in Europe at the moment. What it does mean though is that I have to learn Portuguese. Yet another language, and this is one I know absolutely nothing about!
The thing is that my usual recommendations of Michel Thomas or Pimsleur won’t work. Michel Thomas doesn’t have a “learn Portuguese” version and my brain won’t take using Pimsleur for more than one language (and I’ve tried it for Spanish, Italian and Thai already). So I just did the normal thing and googled “learn Portuguese”. It doesn’t half throw up a load of rubbish!
The only semi-decent course I could find was the Unforgettable Languages one. Their system is quite good in that it gives you stories or phrases to help remember words. The problem is that although it is great for reading and comprehension it is almost guaranteed to give you a horrible accent.
So my next stop was Audible.co.uk (I only realised I’d be here 3 days before so needed something in a rush). That did turn up two gems that I hadn’t heard of before.
The first one was “Earworms“. I’d really recommend them. They take the ordinary everyday phrases and put a chillout beat behind it. They also have courses for French, Chinese & Japanese etc. As I mentioned though I bought my course from Audible and to be honest the sound quality is terrible. It may be fine for an average spoken word course, but not for these music based titles, so I’d recommend getting them from Amazon instead…. except I’ve just checked and they don’t have it!
Audible do have a free booklet you can download though.
The other course I found was “One-Day Portuguese: Teach Yourself” by Elizabeth Smith. She has good teaching skills and seems pretty prolific at languages. The course itself has a few jokes and although Ms. Smith comes across as a little “School Ma’amy” it is quite fun. My only concern is the pronunciation, her pronunciation is probably pretty good (if not native of course) but half of the time you are listening to her student, Andy, and to give you a confidence boost, I presume, he usually has a pretty bad accent which of course sticks in your head with several repeats. However I would recommend her course to any teachers as she has lots of good teaching tricks that I’m sure would be useful in class!
The thing that surprised me about both these courses is the amount of content they squeeze into one hour. I’m used to the more thorough approach which takes a lot more time. But I guess I’ll just take the advice I give my students which is to buy as many of these one hour CDs as you can and just listen, listen , listen to them everyday. They’ll stick in your head without having to do all the thinking of a Pimsleur course, and choosing lots of different titles will cover the basics in many different ways and accents which will hopefully iron out any mistakes or problems with any individual course.
Anyway thanks for reading. Obrigado (now is it just me or does that not sound just like “Thank you” in another language?)
Lots of people have been asking for a printable version of the Genki Phonics page. So I’ve just uploaded a set of Phonics Posters along with the Phonics “Islands Game” and the Phonics “Snakes & Ladders Game”.
The Phonics Page is hugely popular especially in the States at the moment, so all three printables are free for anyone to download. Enjoy!
It’s the turn of the learn Japanese site to get some materials today, this time hiragana worksheets.
Each one is split into sections for easy learning and is ready to print.
Subscribe to this blog
BUY CDs
