Tag Archives: ESL games,

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Learn colours in English with Flashcards and Wendy the Witch

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Flashcards are a great resource in English Language Lessons with children when they are used creatively. It is not enough just to hold up a card, repeat the word and expect the children to remember.

Here is an example video of how I introduce simple colour flashcards (with my young Italian students ) with the help of a friendly Witch Puppet who adores munching on the colour red!

In my next post I’ll give you some more ideas on games to play with children using colours and flashcards.

Happy Teaching

Miranda Flynn Legge

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Teach Emotions in English

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View Miranda Legge Emotions

Ever find you have an unruly class? Your children don’t seem to be learning much? Try adding some sparkle into your ESL lessons and grab children’s attention by using total physical response activities.

By engaging children physically and emotionally they find it easier to understand language. And by associating movement, song and dance with language children are much more likely to absorb and repeat it naturally.

Try a simple game for Introducing “emotions” or as I call it “funny faces”:

Lets get those faces warmed up…

Ask the children to find a space in front of you standing or sitting and tell them to start giving their faces a good massage , cheeks, forehead, nose, mouth, chin, ears (get the children to repeat the words as you say them). Now scrunch your faces up to make them as small as possible, open wide, open your mouth, stick your tongues out, wiggle them around, pretend to chew a gum, pretend to chew 10 gums all together, pretend to chew 100 gums! Make some tongue rolling sounds with a Rrrrrrrrrr. Blow some raspberries.

Now ask the children to copy you and to make appropriate faces that describe each word for example: happy, surprised, furious, sad, angry, shocked, frightened, sleepy, cold. Ask the children to be as dramatic and exaggerated as possible.

Make up some simple flashcards and ask the children individually to mime an “emotion” flashcard while the other children guess which emotion he is trying to describe. Children love miming games as they also encourage the less extrovert children to participate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy teaching

Miranda

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Have no fear! Puppets are positive creatures that bring about positive responses.

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We are extremely happy to finally go live with our new website GoGoGenius

gogogenius_home

My husband and I decided to set up GoGoGenius as we wanted to create a special place where parents, teachers and educators could find products, tips and suggestions to help their children learn English through fun and creativity .

We are based in Florence, Italy, and we sell puppets and educational products primarily, but not exclusively, dedicated to teaching English, using fun, unconventional methods and theatre techniques.

Over the next few weeks we will be adding many more products and resources and we would love to receive any feedback from you.

Check out our puppet range as I believe they are a fantastic resource for any parent or teacher for use in educational activities such as storytelling, phonics, mathematics, and foreign language teaching.

As an English teacher, I use puppets in class on a regular basis because I have seen for myself that they work very successfully . Puppets are positive creatures that bring about positive responses. They fascinate and engage both children and adults in a special way. They capture a child’s attention and make learning fun!

Many educators shy away from using puppets not knowing really what to do with them apart from using them as a simple “doll”.

Fear not!!!!!!

I will try and give you some fundamental puppet tips and convey to you what wonderful teaching tools they really are.

Stay tuned!! Miranda’s back!!!

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English Learning Website for Very Young Children

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Parents often ask me to suggest English learning websites suitable for their very young children .

I often use UpToTen   with my 4 year old bilingual son.

He loves it! It keeps him involved and motivated in thinking in English as well as practicing his computer skills. The site contains very engaging and unique games, songs and activities . Check it out!

uptoten

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Miranda’s ESL DRAMA -WARM UP

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Miranda’s ESL DRAMA -WARM UP

 You will need: Pop music  

This is a very simple warm up , listening and concentration exercise but great fun for everyone. I usually start every lesson with this one. You should actively take part at least initially in this game in order to verbally and physically demonstrate to the children what you want them to do. Instruct everyone to:

– Stand up

– Sit down

– Walk

– Hop

– Jump

– Sit down

– Lay down

– Sit up

– Stand up

– Wiggle (dance the twist)

– Fly

– Swim

– Drive a car (beep beep)

– Clap

– Cheer

– Say hello (wave)

– Spin around

Repeat and change all the action words until the children start associating the verbal instruction with the correct physical action.

Variations:

1. Go round the circle and indicate to everyone which child is a boy or girl. Play the game again this time Instruct “only the girls” or “only the boys” to do a movement or “everyone” in unison

2.For children ages 5+ Simon Says becomes a natural follow on game