Teaching English in kindergarten isn't as easy as it sounds. To teach young children, you'll have to have patience, concentration, and clear educational goals in mind. From some experienced ESL teachers in kindergartens, classes will always comprise of 3 parts- sing songs; learning and playing games. 3 parts seem like very simple and easy but if you want to teach children well, you need imagination and to be creative and fun in every class. When Teaching English in kindergarten the first activity you should do when you begin your class in the morning is sing a lovely song. The song should be a nursery rhyme or good morning song with actions and sounds if possible.
After singing a short song, you have around 5-10 minutes where they will concentrate, so you’ll use this time to teach them the 3-5 words for the class. To teach you usually need to combine learning and playing games or activities. Class games are a very important part of teaching, whether you have a successful class or not, largely depends on your class games. Hare are some popular kindergarten class games and you can use it to make your class exciting and successful.
1: Alphabet Games
When teaching the kids the English alphabet, you can use funny alphabet song and colorful flash cards. The alphabet song is fun and colorful cards can help kids easily remember. You can put all the letters on the wall make sure the kids can touch it. With a small group of children only, maximum 6x students, divide the group into two teams and have a competition. Every time, you say a letter and one of kids from each group stand out and run to the wall to touch the letter they heard. Two kids who touch the right letter first will win the game. One by one until them can recognize the letters and have a good time. Don’t forget to compliment them when they do well and don’t say inappropriate word to hurt them. Kids need to encourage.
2: Games about Recognition
With small groups only, 4-5x students max you may want to start practicing simple word recognition. You can prepare some pictures which suit the words you’re going to teach. When you teach the words, show the picture as well. This can help kids to remember and while you teach some words to them you also can tell them a funny short story about the words. Then after they know the words you teach, you can write some simple words that are easy to represent visually and the suitable picture you prepare before, lay out all the words and pictures, giving your kids match each word to the corresponding picture. All the kids sit on the floor as a round casually. This may help them have the ability to learn. Remember all the games should be fun.
3: Flash card game
Put the flash cards one by one on the floor at the front of the class. Prepare 2 small balls and give them to 2 students who come to the front of the class one; students hit the flash card with their small ball after the teacher says one of the flash cards. The student who hits the right word will win the game. Can offer stickers/hi5’s.
4: Running game
Place all the flash cards around the classroom, and then bring two students to the front of the classroom and begin the game. When the teacher says a word, the two students run to the correct flash card as fast as they can and then bring back the correct card to the teacher.
5: Other games
Place cards on the floor in one line at the front, ask one student to come to the front of the classroom and then the teacher says a word, let the student find it on the floor and then give it to the teacher; students should say the word and give the flash card to the teacher to get a sticker/hi’5.
6. More games resouces
We have a number of free ESL games here: http://teachingchina.net/free-esl-games
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