Letters and Sounds: resources for phonics

The Letters and Sounds webpage

This site is used by the teachers in the Reception classes at my school (and undoubtedly many other British schools) and provides resources to help with the introduction of phonics to 4-5 year old children and onwards. In general, nursery classes (3-4 year old children) follow Phase 1 and reception (4-5 year old children) classes follow Phase 2 & Phase 3. Phase 1 is the listening and communicating stage and Phase 2 onwards starts to introduce letters and their sounds.

Jolly Phonics sound and actions

I'm really enjoying teaching phonics to my nursery class. They follow the Jolly Phonics programme, which links an action to the letter sound. All the kids like doing them, and many spontaneously produce them when they hear the sounds alone. I think its a really good way for kids to remember English sounds.
http://jollylearning.co.uk/2010/11/03/jolly-phonics-actions/

Help your kids with school work: Sparklebox 家で英語を教える

イギリスの小学校の先生がこのウエブ・ページをよく使っています。
フォニクス、数字、理科などいろいろプリント・アウトでいるの。
使ってみて！
今娘が宇宙について勉強しているなので、Sparkleboxで宇宙を検索して、宇宙のポスター、宇宙飛行士のマスク、宇宙人の粘土マットとか印刷した。娘かなり気に入った。

http://www.sparklebox.co.uk/

Absolutely super website used by primary school teachers for ideas in Maths, English, Science...everything!!
Reinforce what your kids study at school by helping them at home too.
All kinds of resources can be printed out and they all look so good.

Right now my daughter's doing space at school, so we've printed out a space banner, astronauts for a rocket and space-themed playdough mats, just to name a few!!

Really, really check it out.

http://www.sparklebox.co.uk/

English learning as a game 英語勉強はゲームで習う！

I always used to play Connect 4 when I was little.

When I started work at an English school in Tokyo, I was surprised to find Connect 4, Jenga and other games in the teaching equipment boxes.
Our school's method was to use fun games to teach children English. If they see learning as a game,　then they are more willing to participate and actually learn more because they want to join in the fun.

It's simple really, all you do to get a go, be it add a counter on Connect 4, take away a block on Jenga or whatever, is answer a question correctly. So prepare some questions, or some flash cards for younger kids, and off you go.

We also used Snakes and Ladders, Bingo, Noughts and Crosses and draughts.

コネクト４はいつも子供のころの好きなゲームだった。

東京の英会話学校を始まった時に、先生達の教材箱の中に、コネクト４とかジェンガとかいろんなボード・ゲームが入っていた。ゲームしながら英語を覚えるのは、学校の教育メソッドだった。子供には、ゲームは楽しくて、参加したいから、英語が’勉強事’じゃなく、’楽しむ事’になる。

始まるのはかんたん。ただ質問かフラッシュ・カードを準備して。自分の番になると、質問を正しく答え、そしてゲームの参加できる。サイコロを投げるかブロックをとれるかコマを移動して進む。

すごろく、ビンゴ、まるばつ遊びとかチェッカーでも使えるよ。

Today's English game: tic tac toe

We often play Tic Tac Toe in our English class. Using the flashcards you want to teach, lay out a square made of 3x3 cards. Turn the cards over so that students don't know what the card is. Make two teams and give each team it's own set of counters or tiddlywinks. Then students decide who goes first. The first student drops the counter onto the card he wants. If he misses, you can decide how many chances he can have to try again. He turns over the card. The opposing team can ask a question about the card and the student answers. The game continues like this until one team has got a row of 3 counters horizontally, vertically or diagonally.
If the game goes to a stalemate, then you can have the students challenge each other for a card playing rock, paper, scissors. It's lots of fun and gets students talking using questions and answers!!

Teaching the days, months and weather

We have a wonderful fabric calendar on our wall which we change every day. It has all the days, months, years and weather on little fabric squares stuck on with velcro. It's so colourful, it really cheers up the wall in our kitchen. And it's so much fun to set all the information for the day!! It's really easy for my daughter to use and many a morning she opens the curtains and announces, "It's a sunny day!!"

Fun and free kids' crafts

I've always used these craft webpages for any craft ideas in my English classes.

There are so many topics listed within them and all the printables are free.

Try them sometime!!

http://www.dltk-kids.com/

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/

Don't sing the ABC song!!

We all know it. A,B,C,D,E,F,G.....But have you really ever thought about how useful this song is? Of course it is naming the letters of the alphabet. We use them when spelling out words. However, when we try to read in English, the names of the letters are not important, but the sound. And the ABC song becomes quite confusing for children when it comes to teaching about the sounds of the alphabet: phonics.
Phonics is a tool for reading the letters of the alphabet. When a child sees the word 'cat', he can sound out each letter to read the word: 'cuh' 'ah' 'tuh'. Running the sounds together he can read cat. The names of the letters of the alphabet would have the child read 'cee' 'ay' 'tee' bringing little understanding to the written word itself.
At a school I used to teach at in Tokyo, the teachers never sang the traditional ABC song. Instead we sang a phonetic version of the alphabet to the tune of, 'This Old Man...' It goes, Ah, buh, cuh, duh, eh, fuh,...etc. Try it and see! It takes a while to get used to, but it is so much more helpful for kids learning English.

Here is a link to the phonetic sounds of the English alphabet.
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/activities/phonemic-chart

The "touch!" game

Teachers often play the "touch ...." game in class. It's a great way for kids to consolidate new vocabulary by finding the picture that goes with the word they hear from the teacher. The game comes from a popular Japanese new year's game called Karuta.
Students often get excited in this game and the action of touching/grabbing the card becomes all important. To make this game really effective, make sure the students say the picture and not just "touch!!" To make this game even more useful, try making the students ask you a question, then you answer and they slam the card, repeating the answer. For example, the students say, "What is it?" and the teacher answers, "It's a dog!!" Then the students slam the dog card and the winner can repeat the sentence to the teacher again.

Great books for little ones: Kipper the Dog and Maisy the Mouse

I teach rhythmic English classes to Japanese toddlers. We play with balls, practice tidying up, sing songs, do crafts and have story time.
I often think it needs a bit of care choosing books for non-English speakers. It's very important to choose colourful, eye catching books with pictures that tell the story. Often there is a whole lot of reading to do with just one picture on the page. It cant hold kids' attention for too long at the toddler age. And at this age, I think the same is true for English speaking kids. See the picture, understand the situation, hear words that repeat what they see. Of course a good storyteller can also add questions, make noises and embellish on the text as much as he likes.
Today we read Kipper in the Snow, part of the Kipper the Dog series. It's aimed at 3-5 year olds although I think they are fine for 2 year olds too. The pictures are clear and tell the story. It's a great book for teaching about weather and winter activities. I really like all the books from this series. It's also a tv series too, and can be found on DVD. We also used Maisy's Weather book for the older kids today. This has lovely pop up parts and spinning parts to change the pictures. Really great for showing what activities are done in different kinds of weather.

What does this say, darling?

I think kids learning English should be able to read their text books. I'm talking from my experience in teaching English as a second language, but the same must be true for native language learners too. If they can understand the contents of their books then they can read them aloud by themselves. If they cannot, then children lose their confidence and start to dislike their English class.
When parents look at their child's book together and ask, "how do you say this?" then children who cannot read their books again lose their confidence and desire for learning English. This is where a sound knowledge of phonics is important.
During the years that I've been teaching English in Japan, I've found that the Finding Out series of text books resolve this problem. They start off simply, introducing phonics from the beginning. The letter sounds are all introduced, followed by 2 then 3 letter combinations then simple sentences. The format is also a very cute, cartoon style with lots of colour. Used with the Finding Out flashcards a teacher can give his students the tools they need for successful reading.
For a look inside these text books, please click on this link:
http://mlh.co.jp/catalog/category/1901/