My umbrella is for... [YL]

I teach English in a primary school and although I have to stick to the programme set out by the school and the state, I give it my own twist as often as possible.

The whole idea of teaching English EFL style to classes of twenty or twenty-five is very questionable and what teachers usually end up doing is drilling ad infinitum until the poor things know everything by heart. So whenever possible I throw in a task-based lesson that will entertain and stimulate the kids creatively.

One of my favourite activities I came up with last year was "My umbrella is for...", which we did jointly with the art teacher.

Here's how it works:

Bring in an umbrella, perhaps make fun of British weather if you're from the UK, and ask the kids what it is. My kids knew it as the English word is pretty similar to the Italian one, but if they don't just teach it and drill it. The umbrella works pretty well for drilling. Open it in three steps, one for each syllable, and have the kids repeat each syllable after you. This way they won't rush it and really have the pronunciation down.

Next, ask them what it is for (this can be done in their L1). Most of them will smugly reply that umbrellas of course are for sheltering from the rain. Act unimpressed. Say something like

"Well, yeah, of course, that's ONE use for them..."

Kids will look perplexedly at you. Go on with:

"Surely you must know at least a few more!"

Keep it up as long as needed, then finally proceed to show them a different use for umbrellas. My favourite is draining pasta, poking holes in it and using it as a colander. Do a funny drawing on the board to show them then ask them if they can think of some more uses. Collect a few ideas, praising their creativity, then tell them they've come up with so many ideas they will have to draw them in their exercise books to keep track.

Once that's done all you need to do is scurry back and forth from kids with their hands up telling them how to say things in English. Here are some ideas my children came up with:

My umbrella is for... Sailing!

My umbrella is for... Showering!

My umbrella is for... Dancing!

My umbrella is for... Flying!

Secret object: His/Her/My [YL]

Grammatical words can be hard to teach, especially to younger learners. In fact, the younger they are the harder it becomes, doesn't it? Typically, I wouldn't even care to focus on grammatical words unless I had a specific reason to, but sometimes you simply might have to do it.

Such a situation might occur, as it occurred to me, when you're dealing with exam preparation. Time is tight and you need to make sure children know what they're expected to, so down with the sour grapes and on with it. However, if you've ever taught kids for some time at least you'll know that you can hardly afford to bore them and what usually makes you a good teacher is your ability to entertain them even when you're teaching supposedly boring stuff.

So anyway I was preparing 7-year-olds for Trinity level 2 last spring and they just had to have his/her/my down. This is what I came up with to help them learn them in a fun way.

Here's how I did it:

Children are asked to form a circle in the middle of the room (preferably no deks in the way) and close their eyes. Here you might need to come up with a clever way to have them really close their eyes, because some of them WILL peek.

A child is chosen and he/she is asked to pick an object in the classroom, one belonging to a classmate, and place it in the middle of the circle. Once this is done the rest of the group can open their eyes and look at the object. Now children try and guess whose the object is and do so by touching the classmate they think it belongs to and saying, for example,

This is his pen!/This is her hat!

If the first child is right then the game is over, otherwise you can just keep on calling children and ask them to guess. One way of helping yourself keep them with their eyes shut is to set a time limit when choosing the secret object and have the rest of the group count up to ten before they can open their eyes.

The great thing is that it doesn't really matter whether their guess is correct or incorrect, what matters is they will keep on practising and won't even notice it too much, as they will be so engrossed with the game.

Just a word of advice: don't keep the game too long or children will get bored. If you really need to, try and ginger it up a little bit, perhaps by having them play in teams.