Telling a story

This one's defeating me a little. I have looked at the Teaching English Games site and am considering buying this author's e-book. I have subscribed to her emails for now to see what a sample of the material is like.

Moving away from throwing money at the problem, my first instincts were to keep the story simple and base it around vocabulary I have already covered. I could review the relevant flashcards at the beginning of the lesson, and then change tack to start the story.

I mentioned in my last post my Thursday K3 class' love of zombies. I have been teaching vocabulary (since the toys topic last month) with an alternative zombie version of the mime or action that goes with the word, so it goes without saying that zombies will be featuring in the story. I don't have a flashcard for zombies as I think that would be a little too scary. I just act as a zombie or get the children to act out being a zombie.

List of past topics and words from which to choose for story (in bold any ones I think promising for a story):

Clothes (dress, skirt, trousers, shorts, tie)

Rooms in a house (living room, dining room, bedroom, kitchen, bathroom)

Things in a house (toilet, bed, TV, computer, wardrobe, toys)

Shapes (circle, square, triangle, rectangle, star)

Vegetables (cauliflower, carrot, cabbage, cucumber, (baby) corn)

Sports (football, basketball, tennis, swimming)

Vehicles (train, plane, bus, bicycle, boat, car)

Adjective (rich, poor, fast, slow)

What's the time, Mr Wolf?

Toys (doll, teddy bear)

Simple Command (make a line, make a circle, hop, jump, hold hands, hold shoulders)

Sign - Symbol (No Smoking, Fire Exit, Pharmacy, Hospital, Rest Room)

Number (Add-minus) (plus, minus, equals, 1-12)

Numbers (add and minus)

Before:

Well I've got two more kindergarten lessons to plan before Songkran. The first of these is for this Monday: Numbers (add and minus).

You may remember that when the topic was "Playing a Game," I bought a clock and used this to play "What's the time, Mr Wolf?" Well Eve suggested that I use this to help with the numbers lesson. I could initiate the game to practise the numbers 1-12.

I had thought that learning some bigger numbers would be useful: 1-12 (via the clock), 100, 1000, 10,000, and 1,000,000. But bigger numbers can't be counted out in a fun way by steps.

Instead I think I will use flash cards, including the numbers 1-12, a + symbol, and a - symbol to vary the number of steps the children take. I think I will bring extra cards for larger groups of children so there are enough to count the entire group. Then the number could decide the number of children making a circle, or making a train.

That will do for now. Next week's topic is Telling a story, so more on that later.

After: The lesson was a success with most of the groups. I made up a set of large dominoes on paper which I stuck to cardboard based on the those I found at this website: http://www.first-school.ws/theme/printables/dominoes-math.htm I also made three extra dominoe sized pieces of paper with a "+," a "-," and an "=." I photocopied worksheets copied from this site and then took them in on Monday.

I found that the children were managing only a plus and a minus sum in the time available so the next day I cut the sheets in half. I also decided to give all the children the same domino to copy. Finally today I realized that it would help if I filled out a sheet myself to give as an example for the children to copy from.

Other things I learnt were that holding three dominoes at once is difficult so as soon as I could I taught the children to make the "+," "-," and "=" signs with their fingers. Children were also very good at counting in order up to 10 but most had not gone beyond this number. I encouraged them to say the number of fingers I held up. I made this more fun by allowing the first child to get the correct answer (or repeat the correct answer) to come up and stand by me and be a zombie (Thursday K3 lesson kids love zombies since I introduced them to them at Halloween).