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Contents:
1. Games of the month
2. Genki Korean
3. Success Secrets of Learning English Book
4. Valentine's Ideas
5. And finally...
Hello,
This month we have a couple of super simple games rather than one big one.
Of course you can chop and change and fit in any higher level language
if you wish. Plus a nice way to see how your students see your classes
with the new GenkiKorean.com.
1. Games of the Month
First off is a couple of suggestions for "What's your name?". The idea here is to use a version of the Jeopardy game.
1. Have 20 A4 cards on the board.
2. Label them A, B, C, D, E across the top and 1,2,3,4,5 down the side.
3. One team picks a card, e.g. B3
4. You turn over this card and on the back there will be a picture of a
famous person or cartoon character.
5. You ask "What's your name?"
6. The kids confer and answer "My name is..." plus the name of
the person on the card e.g. "My name is Captain Jack Sparrow".
7. That's one point.
8. Continue from 3
You can use this with any other question e.g. "What's his / her name?"
or "How old are you?" and the kids answer with the age they think
the person is. You'll have looked these up on the internet before, of course.
This works really well if you add in a few pictures of the teachers.
Like other versions of Jeopardy you can make the 1 line really easy and
worth just one point, then the 5 line tougher for say 5 points.
The other idea this month is "What's your name?" shiritori. This
is similar to last year's "Where do you live?" shiritori.
1. Put the kids in groups.
2. Each group makes a circle.
3. The first kids in each group asks the next person in their group "What's
your name?"
4. The next person answers and asks the next person.
5. This person answers but the name they answer with has to start with
the last letter (or sound) of the previous name. e.g. if the last person
said "Richard" the next person could say "David" or
"Diana" or whatever.
6. Keep going round the group till it gets back to first person and they
answer.
7. Everyone shouts out and raises their hands in the air.
8. The quickest team is the winner.
Depending on the level of your kids you can do a few different versions
of this. The basic one is the one above. For more advanced kids who are
good at phonics you can say the next name has to start with the last phoneme,
or sound, of the previous name. Of course you can use this with any of
the Genki English questions.
However the real beauty with "What's your name?" is that if you
are in Japan with really beginner classes you can simply use Japanese names
and match up the last Japanese block of sound e.g. Mami, Mika, Kazuko etc.
etc.
A good way to score this is the Spiderman Game. It's very popular, but
a few teachers have had problems with how hard it is to win if you have
several groups. The easy way to get around that is to say the winner moves
their Spiderman up two spaces instead of one. Or if you have loads of groups,
let the Spiderman move up 3 places. If all this sounds alien to you, have
a look at the lesson plan here:
http://genkienglish.net/spiderman.htm
Plus there are some nice new Readers' Games coming next week.
2. GenkiKorean.com
I often pop over to Korea but find most Korean textbooks way, way too boring.
So I took a selection of games from the Genki English CDs, translated and
re-recorded into funky Korean. If you teach in Korea, or fancy learning
a spot of the Korean language, have a look at the new new GenkiKorean.com
site.
The main aim, just like the CDs, is to get you into the "learn by making mistakes" mode. It works especially well for Korean where you probably know nothing at all, but after just 20 minutes or so of randomly clicking on wrong answers you begin to pick up on what the right words are. Plus it's always nice to get the students` perspective by taking on a new language yourself.
If enough people visit I'm hoping to add lots more in the future, so please tell your friends and colleagues!
http://www.GenkiKorean.com
3. Success Secrets of Learning English
Wherever you go or travel or talk to teachers, in just about every country,
teachers say their students are shy or afraid of making mistakes. I find
whenever I give workshops to students they very often have lots of knowledge,
but what they need is the push and confidence boost to put it all into
action. It's like dieting, everyone knows how to lose weight: eat less,
move more. But everyone needs someone to help them along and actually do
it.
So I've collated together all the advice I know into a "Success Secrets
of Learning English" book. And instead of charging for it, I've decided
to put it on the website so everyone can get access to it. There is an
English version online but of course if your students could understand all the English they probably
wouldn't need the advice, so there's also a Japanese version online.
Tell as many adult students as you can, because once the confidence barrier
is broken, there's no stopping them!
Japanese:
http://genkienglish.net/eigo/success-secrets-of-learning-english
English:
http://genkienglish.net\successsecretsforlearningenglish.htm
4. Valentine's Ideas
It's that time of year again, and we have a few ideas to bring a little
Valentine's charm to your classroom.
First up is the Broken Hearts game, which works well for any theme. Then
there's the talking "Make a Valentine's Card" page which is great
for a craft lesson. And the most popular Valentine lesson is the "I
love ..." picture book. Not too popular with the boys in class, but
the girls really like it!
You can find out more on the main Valentine's page:
http://genkienglish.net/valentinesday.htm
5. And finally ...
I've been in the studio for most of the month coming up with lots of new
songs. Hopefully I'll have some for you to try out on the "beta test"
section of the forum in the not too distant future. Keep checking. That
way you'll get a chance to try the new songs in class ( and complimentary
of course) in exchange for some feedback, just in case there's any major
problems with them. Then once everything's ready and tested they're be
a whole lot of new materials and ideas on the site.
Thanks to everyone in Germany last month, you were great. Next year, or
maybe even later on this year, I'd love to do a tour of the whole of Germany,
or even Europe, so if you're interested in getting a group of teachers
together in your town or city for a 100% motivating and idea packed workshop,
please get in touch.
Right, back to the studio, then back to Asia later this week. See you soon,
Be genki,
Richard
======================
Richard J. Graham
The Genki way to Teach.
Primary School English Games, Songs and Activities
http://www.GenkiEnglish.com
=====================
" Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you
do. Attitude determines how well you do it." - Anonymous
And if you like the ideas in this newsletter, please feel free to pass
it along to your friends!
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