To receive your own FREE monthly email newsletter, enter your email address below!
Contents:
1. Mr Bump Games + Monkey Family Idea
2. Online Videos
3. Tokyo Workshop Aug 27th
4. Oyako Eigo
5. Tokyo ALT Orientation
6. Making Reading Fun
7. And Finally...
Hello,
I hope you all had a great Summer, and it's now time to start thinking
about the new term! But as luck would have it there's lots of great stuff
on Genki English to help you out.
1. Game of the Month: Lots of Mini Ideas!
Rather than a "Game of the Month", this time I have a few cool
hints and tips sent in by Genki English readers. First off are a couple
of variations on the Mr Bump Game (
http://www.genkienglish.net/mrbump.htm )
In the basic game you blindfold a kid and her/his teammates have to guide
them to the blackboard using "left / right / forward / back "(
http://www.genkienglish.net/leftright.htm ) etc. the quickest team is the winner.
Hannah Walk sent in the great idea of instead of being the first to hit
the black board, you give the blindfolded kid a fly swatter. Then you place
pictures of different bugs (
http://www.genkienglish.net/bugs.htm ) on several desks and the team have to guide their player to swat all
the bugs!
And Katie Dwyer had the cool idea of making the goal a pirate's treasure chest. Then you can put print outs of sharks (
http://www.genkienglish.net/underthesea.htm ) on the floor, if the kid walks on a shark they're out!
Aimee sent in a great idea for any of the other themes. You simply give
the kids copies of the Mini Cards (
http://genkienglish.net/minicards.htm ) already cut out. They listen to the song and put them in order! This
is a very nice way to introduce the vocab in a different manner.
And finally another reader sent in a message following on from last week's
"Sticky Fingers" (
http://www.genkienglish.net/Sticky.htm ) idea, saying that it's a great game to use with the "Monkey Family"
theme (
http://www.genkienglish.net/monkey.htm ) . This can be a tough theme to do, but with this game it's simple, you
simply play Sticky Fingers and the kids ask "What's your name?",
the "magic word" can be any of the Monkey Family! This certainly
makes this theme a whole lot easier to teach!
2. Online Broadband Workshop Videos
Speaking of making things easier to teach, I've always wanted to have an
online video of my "basics" workshop, so that you can watch the
video online and pick up all the little tricks and hints that you can only
get from seeing things in action. So last month the teachers in Fukuoka
were so good, I videoed it, it turned out great, and it's now freely downloadable
on the site as a Windows Media Player video. You'll need broadband to watch
it, and it takes a while to download, but it is packed with ideas and ways
of teaching kids. There's one hour available at the moment, and I'll be
looking at putting more up on the site in future.Enjoy!
http://www.genkienglish.net/onlineworkshopvideo.htm
3. Professional Development Workshop in Tokyo August 27th
Once you've gone through the workshops in the online videos, the next step
is to check out a full day Genki English workshop. Recently I've only been
doing these in elementary schools or for boards of educations, but on the
27th ( a week on Saturday) I'll be doing half of a one day workshop in
Tokyo that's available to anyone. It'll be in Japanese and you can find
out more on the site at
http://genkienglish.net/maruzen.htm
4. Online Parents & Kids Course
Whether you teach private lessons or at elementary school, having the parents
support is really important. To help with this I've put up a new "talking
page" of phrases that parents can use with their kids. All the English
was chosen and recorded by my Mum, so it's all authentic, real English,
and it should really help the parents of your students. The first set is
for "morning routines" and includes things like "It's time
to wake up", "Here's your cereal" and "Brush your teeth"
etc. etc.
The page is accessible from the main
www.GenkiEnglish.com page.
5. Tokyo ALT Orientation
Thank you very much to the hundreds and hundreds of you who attended my
workshop at the Tokyo Orientations! You were great, I tell you, Japan doesn't
know what's hit it this year!!
The workshop I did was a cut down version of the Speech I gave in Kobe
in June (
http://genkienglish.net/kobetokyo2004.htm ).
Some of the pages I used in the workshop were:
What's your name? Song (
http://genkienglish.net/namesong.htm )
Games Page (
http://genkienglish.net/games.htm ) With Japanese versions to help lesson planning.
Katakana Quizzes (
http://genkienglish.net/genkijapan/katakana.htm )
Remember, it's up to you to make sure English Education in Japan doesn't
fall to the Dark Side!
6. Making Reading Fun
Once your kids can do basic conversations and phonics, the next step is
to learn to read. As the old saying goes, you first learn to read, then
you can read to learn. The trick of course is finding material of a suitable
level. Whilst it might be cool to start off with Harry Potter, the kids
would pretty soon find it too hard and give up!
What you needed is a series of "graded readers" where new language
is gradually introduced over a series of books. There are quite a few of
these on the market, but one I would certainly recommend is the Macmillan
Language House "Springboard" series. Why? Basically it's because
they're not just great readers with cool stories, but each book has the
audio and Teachers Guides for
FREE on the internet! This is a huge plus point, and you can find them all
here:
http://genkienglish.net/springboardreaders.htm
7. And Finally...
One other new page I've put up on the site is a new Jobs section (
http://www.genkienglish.net/esljobs.htm ) . It's updated daily, so keep checking back soon. There are some really
cool jobs that pop up there!
And I've also been talking to the British Council about exchange projects.
They have several schools in the UK who are looking for partners in Japan
right now, so if you're interested in letting your kids use their English
in a real setting, have a look at the British Council site at
http://www.britishcouncil.org/montagejapan.htm or get in touch with me and I'll forward on your emails.
The monthly article I write for the Shimane AJET magazine is also online,
if you'd like to have a look:
http://genkienglish.net/shimane2.pdf
Keep a look out for new things on the site over the next few weeks and
as usual if there's anything I can help with or if you have things that
you'd like to see on the site then please let me know.
I'm going to be in Fukuoka on Saturday (Aug 20th) at the Maruzen Bookstore
in Tenjin, if you're in the area, pop along, I'll be going through all
the new CD5 Songs I didn't get to do last time, and it won't cost you a
penny to attend!
http://genkienglish.net/oxford.htm
Be genki,
Richard
======================
Richard J. Graham
Primary School English Games, Songs and Activities
http://www.GenkiEnglish.com
=====================
" The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior
teacher demonstrates.The great teacher inspires."
--William Arthur Ward
And if you like the ideas in this newsletter, please feel free to pass
it along to your friends!
To receive your own FREE monthly email newsletter, enter your email address below!
