THEATRE IN CLASS

I love using theater in class, it makes my students talk and they get familiar with language structure in a fun way. Besides learning things by heart gives them a wide range of sentences and vocabulary they can use and that gives them fluency.
Sometimes before rehersing a play I ask my students to record themselves acting a charachter, that way they pay atention to their pronuciation and can try playing their charachter as they would do on a theatre stage.
They can also record themselves and send their recordings for their teacher to listen and give them feedback.

This webpage can help you create an audiodropbox where your students can place their recordings for you to listen to.

Gruffalo, my favourite

I find theatre plays a very usefull tool for teaching english as a foreing language. I think learning dialogues by heart and repeating lines improves oral skills significantly. Throgh theather you can also boost their self-esteem and confidence.
If you don´t have time to work a whole theather play, you could use  rymes or stories they can learn by heart and recite in class. You can choose 4 or 5 rymes to work through the school term, In the end you can organize a contest for the best ryme or story teller, you could even invite parents to make it more exiting.
My favourite texts for my students to learn are "Gruffalo" and "Gruffalo´s Child" by Julia Donaldson and Alex Sheffler, the text is amazing, it has repetitions, which helps them learn it, it rymes, which also helps the memory task and the stories are intelligent and meaningfull.
You can watch the story in this video, I rather hold the book in my hands though... call me old fashion if you may...

Express yourself!

Writing is a very important skill the students need to aquire at very early age, as they grow up, the writing activities should be concected to their interesets, and the asigments should require them to use their imagination.
To motivate them we can start by watching a video or a movie that gets them all started.
This is a funny one I think, it´s a bit long buy you can choose the parts you want to play in class, you could even edit this same youtube video, if you like.

After watching the first episode they can  write about what their perfect birthday party would be. You could give them some guide lines they should use, to help them organize the text, for example start by saying who would be invited, then where it would take place, what you would have to eat and what you would play with your friends. Don´t forget to say what your presents would be. They should read their esseys outloud and the teacher can encourage all students to comment on everyone´s piece.

Now it is time to listen...

As I said in my previous post, you can use Horrid Herny´s text in many different ways, now we will focus in the listening skills.

We start the same way as the reading activity, going through the vocabulary and reading questions about the audio, only  this time they will have to answer these questions while they listen, which can be tricky in the begining but they learn to do it by doing it, so just let them practice.

Sometimes I record the listening piece myself, it is usually better to use someone elses voice and accent, but at times a teacher has to do what a teacher has to do... and if you want an specific piece on an specific story, you probably have to do it yourself. Besides, students love listening to their teacher making funny voices and acting all silly.

For example, this podcast is what I used for one of my 6th grade classes. I hope you find it usefull.

After answering the questions we play a game called "who am I", it´s very easy, the students have to repeat something said in the listening and the others have to guess who said it.  They like the game a lot and helps them pay special attention to the dialogues and try to memorize it to win the game.

We read an english book!

As a teacher, I love using real materials in my classroom, it´s hard to find the apropiate ones and hard to adapt them to the class level, but they are more engaging for 10 year olds and helps me motivate them for learning.

I use “Horrid Herny´s books a lot, they are very funny and my students just love them. He is so naughty and terrible, it makes them laught, and that´s a great achievment in a classroom. I have always thought that the best tool for a teacher is the sence of humour.

I recomend you all to buy as many titles as you can (there are hundreds of them) for your class library, you can guide your students through them until they can read them for themselves, they will get adicted!

You can use these stories for many different porpouses, I will show you how in the following posts.

This time we will see how work the Reading skills. First you chose a text, there are different levels to pick from, so that shouldn´t be hard, I have chosen an easy one for you, it´s actually from the first book of the saga.

Don´t be horrid, Henry! From Francesca Simon. Chapters 1 and 2

Henry was a horrid baby.

He screemed in the morning.

He screemed in the evening.

At night he never slept.

He put breakfast on his head…

Lunch on the floor…

Dinner on the walls.

And his nappies…what a stink!

Then Peter was born.

Peter was a perfect baby.

He smiled all day and slept all night.

His nappies were never dirty (well, almost never).

Henry was not very happy when Peter arrived. In fact, he was furious.

“I have had just about enough of this baby”, he said to Mum.

“Time to take that baby back to the hospital”, he said to Dad.

Henry looked at Peter. This house isn´t big enough for the both of us, he thought.

Henry tried posting Peter.

He tried losing Peter.

Perhaps he will leave, thought Henry hopefully.

Unfortunately, Peter didn´t leave.

He just grew bigger and bigger, sittting in Henry´s chair and playing with Herny´s toys.

“Mum! Peter´s kicking me! Screamed Henry.

“Mum! Herny´s hitting me!” said Peter.

Why doesn´t Peter ever get into trouble?

First of all I go through the vocabulary with them before we get to the text (breakfast, dinner, nappies, to stink, to post, to kick, to hit, to grow, to scream) all words that might be difficult for them to understand. Then we go through the questions they will have to answer regarding the text, they read them beforehand so they know what to look for while they are reading. Then they start reading, and they answer the questions all by themselves. In the end we correct the answers all together and talk about the text, what the liked most, what was the funniest part, and we bring up the subject of litle brothers or sisters, and how they get along with them.

I usually include pictures from the book, that helps them understand and makes it a lot more fun.

It is good to show them the whole book, from which you took the text, so they can be proud knowing they have read an actual english book, like english kids do.

I use hotpotatoes for the quizes, my students enjoy the feedback and they are easier to correct.

You can find one for this text here.