One of the keys to Genki English is to review every lesson you’ve done at the beginning of each class.
This is also where the kids learn to mix the different chunks of language they have learnt into new and wonderful original phrases.
Here’s an example using the Tanzania curriculum. You can see the various discipline techniques that allow you to really speed things up, how to mix the English to make longer sentences, how to use gestures to teach grammar, plus how easy it becomes when you do this each lesson.
What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
Be genki,
Richard
Earn More From Your Passion For Teaching English!
Richard,
I’ve been learning from your videos, ideas, and your educational insights since a couple of months. You are absolutely fantastic doing what you’re doing. I’m from Mexico and I teach to English Language Learner, I was one, actually. I just love, love, love how you model to all us and how you share !!! Many blessings!
Richard,
Yes, review is so important. If the teacher can do a good job with it, especially get them speaking with partners like actual communication situation (!)…it is awesome. The problem is that kids get bored with it. Keep the pacing brisk and give the kids lots of encouragement and cheering.
Richard,
I loved the video from Tanzania, keep up the good work there. I reall thought the finger gestures that used to get the students to ask each other and then ask the teacher were brilliant and yet so simple to use. It was like a new app that’d I’d always needed but didn’t know I needed. I’ll be putting it to work in tomorrow’s class.
Hi Richard!
What a wonderful video demostration of how to teach in a classroom situation!
I have a request…Can you give please dedicate a little more space to private 1 to 1 or small 3 or 4 students? Thanks
Nena
Hi Richard!
I got really impressed watching the nice shady open air classroom full of enthusiastic people headed by such a charismatic person like you.
Everything seems to be good. Gestures are definitely a very useful tool when we teach and learn kids English (or any other language or a subject).
But there is one question that is haunting me: Would kids be motivated like these adult teachers asking questions about their names and ages? They usually first get to know this kind of stuff in their mother tongue, when they just meet each other.
Or should we make a warmup gamelike somehow, e.g. giving kids cards with new names, ages, nationalities and any other information we’d like them to practice?
Best regards,
Julia
Ingenious! Truly the BEST way to teach oral skills
in a foreign language. A tried-proven method.
Just great my kids are speaking with this stuff
Thanks a lot Richard
Colombia
@Julia & Adam: There are no worries with the kids doing it GE style. (It’s always much easier to motivate kids than adults!) The warm up gets so fast and done with a smile that they totally get on board with it. Then you can keep adding in extra bits to add to the challenge: like in this video: http://genkienglish.net/teaching/how-to-review-10-lessons-in-5-minutes
From around 7 or so lessons in I also add the Lines Game to review everything:
http://genkienglish.net/Lines.htm
@Nena: With 3 or 4 students you can just do everything as it is and it still works great. With 1 on 1 it is much tougher though as there is no one for them to communicate with! 🙂
Here are a few ideas that might help though:
http://genkienglish.net/teaching/one-on-one-individual-esl-efl-lessons
Update: The finger gestures rock! I tried them with my kindergarten kids this morning and they totally worked. The kids really enjoyed it. I even used the gestures for things like “Good job!”. It was a small touch, but the effect was huge.
Dear Richard;
You’ve been my inspiration since I found this Genki English page!!! I’ve tried to follow all your ideas and they really, really work!!! My students and I enjoy every class and that’s very important. I have students from kindergarden to sixth level and they have a very good time during my classes.
Thanks a lot for this special space of knowledge and funny english not only for little kids, because adults also enjoy it.
I read every e-mail and bring every new idea to the classroom.
Have a good day!!!
Thank you so much for the video that you sent to me. My students grade 4 like it very much .However the students of grade 1 they are so noisy and it is very difficult to control them when I ask them to work in pairs or ask me questions.
Thanks for the great comments again!
@Thien: Discipline is the key to getting this to work with the younger kids. In the very first Genki Warm Up lesson spend quite a bit of time in getting them to do the commands really quickly as you say them. AND …. get them used to waiting for you to give the commands by using lots of dramatic pauses in between each command. Similarly when you move on to the What’s your name? lesson, spend quite a bit of time getting them to ask you so they know what is expected.
A few of the regular discilpine ideas might help too!