Family and family members is something that you're just bound to teach as an EFL teacher, whether to younger learners or adults. The problem is, most activities you find in books are pretty boring and don't seem to engage students, especially children, a whole lot. Songs are usually okay, but besides helping them with pronunciation and memorisation of single items (i.e. father, mother) songs don't really get them to actively and engagingly use focus language, which is usually the toughest challenge in EFL teaching to children.
I must admit I'm a bit of a TBL kind of guy (if you don't know task-based learning, check it out on its Wikipedia article, it'll be worth it), but TBL activities just make perfect sense when it comes to teaching lexis. I've found that if you get your kids to actually ask you for new vocabulary and to use it because they have an intrinsic reason to do so, then well, Bob is pretty much your uncle (no pun intended).
So anyway this is what I came up with to teach family members in a way that is both engaging for the kids and effective in terms of memorisation.
Here's how it pans out:
Get a set of nine pictures featuring you and members of your family, relatives or just people who are important to you, e.g. your best friend, your boy/girlfriend. You can either draw these yourself (which gives the activity a nice touch) or use photos, just make sure they're large enough for everyone to see, especially if you're teaching a big group. Stick them all face-down on the wall to create a 3x3 square. Turn over the middle one (which will be the picture of yourself) and ask kids who they think it is. Make it fairly easy to guess, think of a feature that children will immediately recognise, like a tuft of hair or a peculiar pair of glasses. Then proceed to call one child at a time and ask them to choose a square and turn it over. Ask them to look at the picture, show it to the rest of the class and try to guess who the person is. Have them ask you:
Is this your...
E.g. Is this your father?
It is advisable to drill this using your body. What I usually do is gently heaving my shoulders up and down for a total of three times (once for each word). Have the kids do this as well, it'll help them remember. Hopefully they will associate the movements to the sound and so next time they can't think of the question you just heave your shoulders up and down without speaking at all. Most of the time they will get it.
Every time you tell them whether they were right or wrong, tell them using always the same tone or making always the same facial expressions. What I usually say is:
This IS my father!
This is NOT my father!
Soon enough children will start asking you for a lot of words, either to guess right or to make fun of you. Say for example you show them a picture of an old woman (your grandma) and the tomboy of the class wants to make fun of you, she'll ask you how to say girlfriend or lover or wife and, most importantly, she'll be more likely to remember it.
Try and include a wide variety of people, your family members, a couple of relatives, perhaps your best friend, your partner and, depending on the level of the class, your pet (pets are decidedly quite easy to guess). What I like to do is include the children as well, as in, I include a drawing of a bunch of kids that look like them:
Is this your class?
This IS my class!
This is great because 1) it's fairly easy so it'll boost their self-confidence, 2) it's funny, 3) it's great for rapport-building.
Continue until all the people have been correctly identified, which might take a while, but the great thing about this activity is that the more wrong guesses they make, the more they will practise focus language and, most importantly, they won't be thinking about their English, they'll be thinking about the game!
Once the game is over, ask them if they can remember all of them. If you have some spare time or you want to give them some homework ask them to draw their own love circle (even if technically it's a square) to play the same game next time in pairs. The feasibility of this however will largely depend on your class size.
Is this your...
E.g. Is this your father?
It is advisable to drill this using your body. What I usually do is gently heaving my shoulders up and down for a total of three times (once for each word). Have the kids do this as well, it'll help them remember. Hopefully they will associate the movements to the sound and so next time they can't think of the question you just heave your shoulders up and down without speaking at all. Most of the time they will get it.
Every time you tell them whether they were right or wrong, tell them using always the same tone or making always the same facial expressions. What I usually say is:
This IS my father!
This is NOT my father!
Soon enough children will start asking you for a lot of words, either to guess right or to make fun of you. Say for example you show them a picture of an old woman (your grandma) and the tomboy of the class wants to make fun of you, she'll ask you how to say girlfriend or lover or wife and, most importantly, she'll be more likely to remember it.
Try and include a wide variety of people, your family members, a couple of relatives, perhaps your best friend, your partner and, depending on the level of the class, your pet (pets are decidedly quite easy to guess). What I like to do is include the children as well, as in, I include a drawing of a bunch of kids that look like them:
Is this your class?
This IS my class!
This is great because 1) it's fairly easy so it'll boost their self-confidence, 2) it's funny, 3) it's great for rapport-building.
Continue until all the people have been correctly identified, which might take a while, but the great thing about this activity is that the more wrong guesses they make, the more they will practise focus language and, most importantly, they won't be thinking about their English, they'll be thinking about the game!
Once the game is over, ask them if they can remember all of them. If you have some spare time or you want to give them some homework ask them to draw their own love circle (even if technically it's a square) to play the same game next time in pairs. The feasibility of this however will largely depend on your class size.
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