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Contents:
1. This & That: Queen & Servant Game
2. First Lesson of the Year + NHK
3. Spiderman 3 Game
4. And finally
Hello,
Welcome to the new term, and indeed to a new school year for many teachers.
Here are a few ideas to help you out...
1. This & That: Queen & Servant Game
This month's game is taken from the Teachers' Questions section of the
site:
Q: One thing I always kind of avoid is teaching "these and those".
If there would be something to make this topic easy for the kids, I would
be happy.
A: I learnt a game last week that may help here from Craig Kingsley. It's
called the Queen and Servant game.
1. Pick two kids.
2. Ask which one wants to be the Queen or King.
3. The one who is most keen, make them the servant!
4. The other kid is the ( King or ) Queen and sits down.
5. The Queen shouts out "Bring me that!" and points in a random direction.
6. The servant has to go and get something, anything and bring it back
to the Queen.
7. The servant presents it and says "This?".
8. The Queen says "No! That!" again pointing in a random direction.
9. Repeat from step 6 until the Queen is presented with something she likes!
I would imagine it would be quite easy to change this to "Bring me those!" and "These?".
The trick is to get the kids to really ham up the acting. It then becomes
a drama lesson where the focus is on the emotion of the characters and
the English sinks in effortlessly. If there are any bullying problems in
the school, of course don't even think about this game!
2. First Lesson of the Year + NHK
Last week on the blog I ran a series of posts on ideas for the very first
lesson of the year. I gave quite a few hints and ideas on how to start
things off so the kids know this is going to be fun, but you also set up
the rules, expectations for the rest of the year. The main content ideas
were:
Elementary School: How are you? song + How are you? Monster game
Junior High School: What's your name? song + getting the kids in the computer
room for "phonics" practice instead of just the alphabet.
More details are on my blog at:
http://genkienglish.net/richardsdiary.htm
Or if you want to see a Japanese teacher trying her first ever English
lesson, have a look at the NHK documentary about Genki English, which you
can now see online ( in Japanese only though -sorry!). The teacher has
one workshop, a private consult, one practice lesson then has to teach
her first lesson in front of the parents ( and national TV) - can she do
it?
http://genkienglish.net/nhk1.htm
3. Spiderman 3 Game
You've probably played the Spiderman game on the website already ( if you
haven't it's a huge hit with older kids and in high school), but to keep
things bang up to date, here's a simple twist to make it the "Spiderman
3 Game"
All you do is that instead of having 2 teams of Spiderman 1 vs. Spiderman
2, you have another team who have a picture of Spiderman 3 ( do a quick
google search for the picture).
The trick then is that if a team gets a question right, their Spiderman
moves up TWO spaces, and the other team's enemies move up one space. This
makes it a whole different ball game and much more fun.
If all this sounds completely unintelligible, have a look at the illustrated
description on the site and all will become clear:
http://genkienglish.net/spiderman.htm
4. And finally ...
There are quite a few other new things coming this month. Ones that are
already up are:
* Narrations for 3 more Picture Books
* Article on how to teach using songs even if you're not musically inclined.
* Domino Game
(All linked up from the main menu page)
Plus on the www.GenkiJapan.net website there are two new songs, one for
learning katakana ( with a hip hop beat) and hiragana ( with a techno beat).
And on the www.GenkiKorean.com site there's a new song for learning the
Hangul characters. All very useful to get your head around what the kids
are going though in your lessons.
Also if you have your own blog or website, it would be great if you could
make a link to Genki English. I'm trying to make more materials for students
to use online and the more visitors to the site, the easier it will be
to put new things up for them.
Right, back to work on more new materials for you, there are some nice
surprises coming next month..
Be genki,
Richard
======================
Richard J. Graham
The Genki way to Teach.
Primary School English Games, Songs and Activities
http://www.GenkiEnglish.com
=====================
And if you like the ideas in this newsletter, please feel free to forward
it on to your friends!
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