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 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!
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There’s already a video of “How to teach Genki English: the basics” online, but quite a few teachers have asked to see how everything works in an actual class. So that’s what today’s video is, the first ten minutes of my standard first class.
If you like it, please give it some good marks at YouTube and I’ll see about making some more.
I must have taught this lesson a million times so it is very well practised and very dense with regards motivation talking etc. but of course when I first started out my lessons were nowhere near as smooth, so please don’t let the video scare you!
(If you need want to brush up your Japanese, have a look at my Classroom Japanese page.)
Hopefully you’ll get some ideas and see how good even beginner students can be with a little motivation and music thrown in there.
It’s of a small school where I taught all the grades together. They have had a few lessons before, but the Rock, Paper, Scissors song was their first time.
It starts off part way through my warm up,
Then Genki English Rule 1: Think you can and you can!
Then intro of Rock, Paper, Scissors i.e. each word twice and then once through the mini-lesson on the software part of CD4. As you can see the kids pretty much got it just from this.
Then Genki English Rule 2: Losing just means “try again!”
Then another couple of goes through the song very fast.
Then the song itself.
Altogether it’s 10 minutes. You’ll see how much Japanese I use and how much emphasis is put on motivation talk. These were really good kids, but their speed was about the same as most good classes.
The song is from Genki English CD vol.4: http://www.genkienglish.net/cd4.htm and there is a thread about this video on the forum.
As I said, if you like the video, please do give it some good marks at YouTube and I’ll see about making some more!
Ever since the Team Taught Pizza sold out last year, I’ve had teachers wanting to get their hands on a copy.
But not content with merely revising the TTP, this time AJET have added in whole new sections on Team Teaching, Learning Theory, Instructional Planning and Elementary Schools. Hence the rename of the book to Planet Eigo. I’ve already heard great review from teachers and I really like the parts I’ve seen.
We’re hoping to get the first stock in this week, but expect it to sell out straight away,so if you live in Japan and want your copy right away get your order in today!
I found a nice little site with games for teachers of French. One of the ideas that I liked was the “The Queen of England never…” game….
1) You write the phrase on the board.
2) Kids race to the front and take turns to continue the sentence in as many ways possible.
Examples they give are The Queen of England never … takes the bus, pays in cash, goes to the pub etc. You could also change it to any famous person, teacher or cartoon character.
Could be a good idea for Junior High level practice? You can find out more at http://www.frenchteacher.net/jeux.htm
Hearing the GE songs is one thing, actually seeing the how the gestures and everything works in real life is something else! So I’ve just put up 3 videos of large classes singing three of the songs: Left & Right, What time is it, Mr Wolf? & the Thank You song. For all of the kids they had only learnt the song 3 to 5 minutes before and for many of them it is their first ever English class - I’m sure you’ll be impressed!
If you do like the videos, please give them some good marks at YouTube and I’ll see if I can make some more. And if you have any videos of your students singing the Genki English songs I’d LOVE to see them! You can either send them to me, or put them up on YouTube and I’ll link up to them. If everyone had just a couple of songs, we could get videos of them all done in no time!
Another tip for yesterday’s “What do you want to do?” song is that it’s very easy to change into “What do you want to be?”, which can otherwise be a bit of a mouthful to teach in one go. From a motivation/careers education perspective, remember it’s not just English that we teach, “I am a pilot” is a much better phrase than “I want to be a pilot” though. For children to actually see themselves in the role makes it a much more solid aim and much more likely to come true. Do you want to be the best teacher in the world or are you the best teacher in the world? : )
Anyway, after last month’s Photo Real Flashcards I’ve had lots of really great feedback, thank you very much. And one of the biggest requests was for Jobs Photo Real Flashcards. We’re still working on them and they are looking good…. so as a little taster, try clicking on the doctor dude above. You’ll need your CD Owners Password, or if you don’t have one yet simply order a Download Pack and you’ll have them for tomorrow’s class!
P.S. today’s new game is Atley Jonas’ “Ewww..gross“, but be warned it’s not for the feint hearted!
“I want” can be a popular request from students, but when teaching it there are a couple of important points to keep in mind. First of all, depending on the students’ native language “I want” can sometimes have two very different meanings depending on what follows it. For example in Japanese “I want something” is “…. ga hoshii” but “I want to do something” is “,,,tai”. So it pays to have a good solid explanation practised so the kids know exactly what is going on.
The second thing to consider is the “I want never gets” effect. For example if you are teaching in Europe, the classroom teacher may go out of their way to make sure students always say “I’d like to” instead of “I want” in their native language. Usually they are pretty unsuccessful at this, but the last thing they may want is an English teacher teaching “I want” as normal usage if they’ve been trying to get their kids off it all year! So it probably pays to check with them first. This difference is of particular notice with regards US-Europe uses of the word, for example when researching the second Christmas theme most American teachers favoured (favored?) “What do you want for for Christmas?” but many Commonwealth teachers were horrified by this and were 100% in favour of “What would you like for Christmas?”.
But anyway, “What do you want?” is still a hugely popular question for parents to ask younger kids and “What do you want to do?” is something that people of all ages often use. I think I must hear it dozens of times a day! So let’s have a look at “What do you want to do?” as a classroom theme.
My first piece of advice would be to introduce and practise all the verbs you’ll need in a previous lesson. A couple of ways to do this are commands as in the TPR Warm Up, or my favourite using the “What are you doing?” song with the Harry Potter game.
Then it is really simple in the next lesson to introduce “I want to…” and re-use all the verbs from the previous lesson e.g. “I want to sleep.” The kids are amazed to find out they can chop and change the English and it makes the lesson really easy as the only new thing is the grammar point, but they have enlarged their communication abilities immensely.
This week there was a request on the forum for an “I want ” theme, so I’ve just put up a demo song along with some picture cards for “I want…” plus the “What are you doing?” verbs. It’s still in the demo stage, but let me know if you like it and I’ll clean it up and hopefully get it on the main site. Hopefully it’ll make it a lot of fun to introduce this theme in your lessons:“What do you want to do?” song & A4 cards.
Oh, and if anyone has any great “I want” games then please send them in!
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