One topic of late has been how to fit Genki English into a longer, full time, multi year course of study. At the moment there are 40+ lessons on site which if you include reviews comes out to around 60 lessons, or 80 if you double each one up to two lessons a theme. I’ve even heard of schools doing 3 or 4 lessons per theme, using different games, worksheets then adding in even more vocab to the basic question. Plus of course there are a lot more themes coming in the future!
But anyway, the question is what to do when you’ve used all these themes up. At that stage the kids will know a heck of a lot of English ( just imagine if you could do all the GE themes in a new foreign language!). The aim then is to use real life projects. I’m sure you’ve seen the two I have written up on the site, and in an article called “How to use Genki English: Songs, Games & Projects” I wrote last week, I go through more ideas and how to solve some of the technical and administrative problems that crop up. For example some other ideas are:
Get them to describe their favourite toy or video game – you can start from really simple adjectives
Do a weather exchange – really easy, and a a great way to practise “What’s the weather like in…?”
Write a picture book. – your kids write the words, the other school draws the pictures!
Introduce your school or town to the world.
Get them to describe their homework in English.
Links to other subjects such as geography – kids in the UK study Japanese volcanoes – show them what it’s like to live near one!
Of course you can start some of these projects whilst working through the GE themes, in fact I’d really recommend this idea. Pick an exchange project you’d like to do, for example the pets project, then figure out which themes the kids will need to learn to do it, and plan your next few lessons around this. Simply by setting yourself a goal such as this you’ll achieve a whole lot more in a shorter space of time. Then once the kids get addicted, they’ll be eager to try the next set of songs & games in order to do the next exchange project!
That’s what it’s all about, getting the kids to be communication addicts!
