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Contents:
1. Game of the Month: Gorilla Strikes Back
2. Countries Card Game
3. Computer Room & Fun Homework
4. And Finally.... Funky Mummies, Weird Foods and Videos
Hello,
If you've been keeping up to date with the Genki English blog you'll know
there's a lot of new stuff on the site this month. So here's a special
edition of the newsletter to keep you bang up to date...
1. Gorilla Strikes Back
This is my version of the "Gorilla Game", and is currently one
of my favourites.
1. The kids gather at one side of the room.
2. The teacher holds up one
picture card and the kids have to make a sentence out of it, e.g. "Do you like fish?", "I have a dog.", "I like apples." etc. and shout it out together.
3. Continue from step 2.
4. But ... when the gorilla card appears the kids all rush to the opposite
side of the class.
5. The teacher runs through the kids to touch the wall at the side where
they were previously standing.
6. If any of the kids take longer than the teacher to touch their wall,
they are out. ( But you rarely need to enforce this rule as the kids usually
just enjoy the running part without needing the extra motivation.)
As you can see it's very simple, but again that's what makes it work. I've
tried this from 1st to 5th grades and they all love it.
You can of course change the language to any question or sentence you are
studying. That's the real beauty of this game, the kids don't just repeat
the words but have to think and make sentences that fit. You can try mixing
cards from different themes you've done e.g. colours where the kids have
to say "It's red" etc. or places where they have to say "I'm
going to ...". Even total beginner classes can get to some pretty
advanced stuff pretty quickly, all thanks to the gorilla-anticipation induced
adrenaline!
2. Countries Card Game
The animals card game has been a huge hit with the kids (just make sure you stick to the original
rules though!).
In 5th and 6th grades kids start learning about other countries, and although
you can say to them "The US covers an area of 9,826,630 sq km",
it is pretty much useless to the kids as they have no frame of reference.
Is that big? Is it small?
Enter the new countries card game!
Here you effortlessly learn the values of things like population size and
GDP simply by playing the game. If your kids have already studied the categories
in social studies class then give this new game a go, it's very addictive.
Needless to say it's not a game for 1st or 2nd graders.
The data comes from the CIA World Factbook and Wikipedia, so if you do
spot any errors then please let me know.
http://genkienglish.net/cardgamecountries.htm
3. Computer Room & Fun Homework
Want to stop the kids forgetting everything before the next lesson? Want
a fun way to review at home? Here's something that will definitely help
you.
This month we have a whole suite of new computer games all online for anyone
to use, either at home or in the school's computer room. They'll make your
life so much easier.
We currently have games for:
Left & Right, How are you?, Weather, Where are you from?, Seasons,
How old are you?, How much?, Where are you going?, Family and What are
you doing?
The full teachers' guide is online at:
http://genkienglish.net/call.htm
4. And Finally.... Verbs, Funky Mummy, Weird Foods and Videos
For your Junior High School students there's a new "irregular verbs"
illustrated dance track:
http://genkienglish.net/irregularverbs.htm
If you're thinking about Halloween there's a new "no preparation"
version of the Funky Mummy game and lots more ideas on the Halloween page.
http://genkienglish.net/halloween.htm
Videos of how to teach over 30 of the Genki English songs are also now
online. You already have them on the Teaching Guide Videos CDROM, but now
you can see them right there on webpage next to the written description.
Just choose a theme from the "Songs / Themes" pull down menu
at the top of the Genki English website.
To help with teaching "Do you like...?" I've also put up some
new "weird food" cards. They're great for getting everyone to
practice "No, I don't!" together. The full list is:
Do you like mayonnaise?
Do you like strawberry mayonnaise?
Do you like rice?
Do you like chocolate rice? ( a big "erghh" in Japan!)
Do you like dogs?
Do you like hot dogs?
Do you like ice cream?
Do you like worm ice cream?
Do you like pizza?
Do you like cockroach pizza?
As usual, the weirder the stuff is, the easier the kids remember it.
http://genkienglish.net/doyoulike.htm
Anyway, there's lots more coming up on the Genki English website in the
next few days and weeks, so keep popping back and why not make my blog
your daily web read?
Be genki,
Richard
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And if you like the ideas in this newsletter, please feel free to forward
it on to your friends!
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