Doing a presentation to class might seem obvious to you or me, but can be a huge game changer in countries that usually associate English with rote learning or grammar study. It blew our teachers away last week to see that their kids could actually create something new in Genki English class. And many countries are now stressing the importance of presentations across all subjects.
It’s also the easiest way for your boss to see results they understand from what you are doing in class!
My favourite Genki English themes to do with presentations are:
Superhero – make your own superhero with “Hello, my name is …. I’m from… I’m a superhero! I can …. ”
Or Monkey Family – where the kids draw their own family (not the monkeys!) and introduce them.
What’s your favourite? – where the kids draw their own favourite movie, food etc.
It’s a great way to see what the kids are into, and it dramatically improves their confidence and speaking skills. The parents and other teachers are amazed and best of all, videoing these lessons allows you to do some of the project based lessons.
So what are your favourite themes to do presentations with?
P.S. There’s still time to make a comment and maybe win this month’s CD!
I will list three songs and some ideas of what projects to use.
Well, there is the cute Mr Octopus theme..students make their own monsters…I also want to use a picture book ‘Go away big green monster’ by Ed Emberley as further development with this theme.
Of course, the ‘Where are you from?’ theme you may make a new flag for your country. Of course, many teachers are now linking this theme to the world cup teams..’where are they from?’
‘what’s your name?’ students study how students say hello around the world and how they do it. In Korea people bow, in France people kiss each other on the cheek or shake hands…etc. A good project would be to get students to make their own name tags etc.
Nice! I guess this would be one call in support of putting “Where are you from?” after the colours song! And maybe it’s justification for having a shapes theme, so you can describe your flag???
I think that a shape theme wouldn’t be so bad after all, as then I could add some more math and other skills in there. Watching my kids it seems they love shapes; I don’t think they need to really remember them to an extend that they could sayt them, but it might be helpful for several lessons if they could understand them/
Reg. the presentation topic: I must admit that I haven’t done enough of this yet (only for parents day)
I love the house topic,
What do you think of…
and anything with foods; breakfast, curry, Italian, traditional, ICE CREAM (that’s so good)…
In the I Love Vegetables booklet, I don’t know what courgettes are nor have I ever heard of aubergine. Maybe you could make another booklet using two other common vegetables.
Hi Janet, it’s very important that we don’t limit children to our own personal experiences. Having said that, check out the US version of the book, I’m sure you’ve eaten both!
My 4th years are giving an end-of-term and school leaving presentation to their parents at school today. It’s about dinosaurs. My name is T.Rex I am from …I like to eat meat. I am very big. I cannot swim. What’s your name and where do you live? etc.
They cannot wait to do this for their parents.
Wow, these are getting better and better!
Hi Everyone;
I did six presentations this term, and all with Genki of course. I made a big insect poster, and Creepy Crawlys is an all time favorite, so used the bugs in the song on the poster. Sometimes if you are lucky a bug will land on the floor while you sing it. They go crazy! What’s That!!!!!!! They really want to know. So with the poster, I put it on a white board and they each came up, named a bug, said it could fly, crawl,wiggle, and then we sang Creepy Crawlys. Big Success.
We are learning about the Creepy Crawlies at the moment, and of course found a way to incorporate the “How are you monster?” game. But this time we asked; What’s that? It’s a beetle.(students repeart) Take two steps forward. What’s that? etc. And when the answer was; It’s a mosquito, they had to run back. The students who were tagged, then picked out the next bug. While they where finding the one they wanted, the other students kept asking; What’s that? and I answered; I don’t know, until the student had found their “bug”. Big hit with my 4 and 5 years old.
I had a lot of success with this last year, despite an initial lack of confidence from a few homeroom teachers. I did it with the house theme, where do you live and the animals + adjectives themes – they invented their own new animal and described it to the class in whatever way they wanted.
The presentation went very well. Happy faces all around.
These 4th years were part of a pilot project here where secondary school teachers went into 4th year classes once a week for a 2 month period to prepare/”test” the students to see if they were “fit” for secondary education. Ma groups passed with flying colours, as they were judged to be very confident using the English language, were versatile and willing to have a go. And they enjoyed it!
So thanks to GE I feel as if I have done the best I could for these kids in the 2 years I’ve been teaching them.
Thank you.
Wow those are really great ideas. I didn’t do any presentations yet, but I guess with the new schoolyear and the new school it is definitely something I will do. Thanks for the nice ideas!
We did a Thanksgiving party. I invited the parents of my students – it was the first time I had met most of them! My boss and co-workers also came and it was great for them to see how well the kids have been learning.
We did the new Thanksgiving song and then each kid said one thing they are thankful for. I let the kids choose which songs to sing. Their favorites: Doctor Doctor, I Want to Be, and Under the Sea.
It was such a fun night. I’ll definitely do one party (“Presentation”) each semester. I loved being able to show off how much the kids had learned. And it was such a confidence booster for the kids.
hello everybody i think that presentation have a massif and potential on a personnality, it really “destroy” the fear of facing the others(audiance) its a very helpfull way to be open minded