Natasha
English preschool teacher from Siberia (Russia)
Five essential tips for teaching very young children English. Are you daunted by the prospect of teaching English to very young children? Sheona Gilmour, lead educator on our new online course for teachers and parents, offers a few tips. Teaching English to very young children can be challenging, especially if you haven't done any training for the early years classroom. The first time I walked into a kindergarten, I didn’t want to go back the next day.
Key Person & Attachment - Early Years Matters. The Key Person Children thrive from a base of loving and secure relationships. This is normally provided by a child’s parents but it can also be provided by a key person. How Are Happiness and Learning Connected? As teachers, we also know that when students' affective filters or defenses are sky high, fight or flight responses will be modus operandi. A room full of defensive behaviors (withdrawn, angry) is a sad, unproductive place to teach and learn. Now let's flip it and take a look at how much more we are able to learn when we are in harmony with the people and things in any given educational environment.
Being in harmony means feeling safe, feeling valued and a necessary part a group, and in this case, a learning community. Hearts and Minds in Sync What does research show to be the opposite of the brain's fight or flight response? Being Multilingual: You speak with an accent. I don’t. Accents are things that only other people have. They are, by extension, things that you don’t want to have. Accents are, in short, shortcomings. This is why, if someone tells you that “you speak with no accent”, you can be sure of two things: that you have received words of praise indeed; and that you speak with the same accent as that person.
So the person is actually not only praising her own accent, she is also giving evidence that she has no idea she’s got one. FAQ: Raising Bilingual Children. Why want bilingual children? There are many reasons, but the two most common are: 1) The parents speak different languages (say, an American woman and a Turkish man). 2) The parents speak the same language, but live in a community where most people speak something else (say, a Korean couple living in the USA). 9 Things You Need to Know About Play (and Preventing Challenging Behavior!) — Challenging Behavior.
Over and over again I’ve seen examples of intentional support for a child’s play result in language spurts, increased attention span, social skills, friendships formed, and dramatic reductions or the elimination of the challenging behavior…sometimes even when the behavior was occurring at other times of the day.
Curious? Read on… 1. Children need 45-60 consecutive minutes of play time per day. Play takes time. 2. If we want children to control their impulses, follow the rules and routines of our classrooms, and be nice to others then play needs to be at the center of the curriculum. 3. For some children developing the skills to form friendships and to play cooperatively with peers does not come naturally. 4. Typically we see children engaging in cooperative pretend play by the end of the preschool years. 5. 5 Ways to Prevent Challenging Behavior with a "Sensory- Seeking" Child with a Short Attention Span — Challenging Behavior.
Let’s think about how we can build on his interest in water and build on the fact that water play seems to self-regulate him. These ideas can be adapted for any child who moves rapidly from one activity to the next and who seems to be "sensory seeking," meaning they seek out sensory experiences such as playing with water, sand, or glue. Or, who consistently crash their trike into the wall or push into other children, seemingly for no reason. Here are some thoughts and suggestions: Play. Poems for kids.
School Radio - Nursery songs and rhymes. 50+ Quick & Easy Kids Crafts that ANYONE Can Make! How to teach children English using illustrated storybooks. What makes illustrated storybooks such a good resource for teaching young learners of English? The British Council’s Gail Ellis, co-author of a storytelling handbook for primary English language teachers, explains. Listen to an interview with Gail in our podcast and register for her webinar taking place on Thursday, 2 October. Illustrated storybooks provide an ideal resource for helping children learn English.
This is because children love listening to stories. The Art of Control. Executive function — our ability to remember and use what we know, defeat our unproductive impulses, and switch gears and adjust to new demands — is increasingly understood as a key element not just of learning but of lifelong success. Researchers at the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University describe executive function as an air traffic control system for the mind — helping us manage streams of information, revise plans, stay organized, filter out distractions, cope with stress, and make healthy decisions. Children learn these skills first from their parents, through reliable routines, meaningful and responsive interactions, and play that focuses attention and stirs the beginnings of self-control. But when home is not stable, or in situations of neglect or abuse, executive function skills may be impaired, or may not develop at all, limiting a child’s success in elementary school and later life.
Imaginary Play. Learning Time with Timmy. Practical tips. By Opal Dunn, educational consultant and author Introduction Young children learn English differently from most adults.
Most have an innate ability to pick up English while taking part in activities, by making sense of what they are doing and picking up the adult’s language that accompanies the activity. You can find out more in the British Council booklet ‘How young children learn English as another language’, also available on the parents pages of the LearnEnglish Kids website. Planned English sessions You can plan regular sessions which will usually take place:
Ten ways to support your child’s English-learning at home. As the British Council opens a new Learning Time with Shaun & Timmy centre in Mexico for two- to six-year-olds, senior teacher Sarah Reid offers some useful tips for supporting your child’s learning at home. More and more parents want their children to learn English from a young age. I often meet parents of children as young as two or three who say that proficiency in speaking English will help their child 'get ahead in a globalised world'. In other words, the sooner their children get started, the better. Sound Words: Examples of Onomatopoeia. Onomatopoeia is a fun, linguistic tool used in literature, songs and advertisements. Now that you've seen examples of the individual words, consider the following examples of onomatopoeia words in use.
Take a look at the different onomatopoeia examples in Todd Rundgren's song, appropriately named Onomatopoeia. Carol Dweck: The power of believing that you can improve. How can parents and teachers best educate young children? What principles can both teachers and parents bring to the education of very young children? Gillian Craig, who was part of the Learning Time with Shaun and Timmy writing team, explains.
As teachers and parents, we follow certain principles in our roles. Often though, these principles overlap and all we need to do is recognise and reinforce these areas. Ask (the right) questions When my daughter came out of her class one day shortly after her course started, I asked her, 'What did you do in class today? '. The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids. What do we make of a boy like Thomas?
Thomas (his middle name) is a fifth-grader at the highly competitive P.S. 334, the Anderson School on West 84th. Slim as they get, Thomas recently had his long sandy-blond hair cut short to look like the new James Bond (he took a photo of Daniel Craig to the barber). Symbolic play and language development. 1. Introduction 1.1. Relationship between symbolic play and language Symbolic play, or pretend play, and language are known to be highly interrelated (DeLoache, 2002, McCune, 2010, Smith and Jones, 2011). Both rely on representational capacity, namely, employing one element as a signifier to represent another element (McCune, 2010). 1.2. Raisingchildren.net. 9 Things You Need to Know About Play (and Preventing Challenging Behavior!) — Challenging Behavior.
How young children learn English through play. Play. Community Playthings. Heuristic play is rooted in young children’s natural curiosity.
The Power of Evening Routines. The word “structure” can evoke less than positive associations. FAQ: Raising Bilingual Children. Multilingual Preschoolers. Does being bilingual make you smarter? Language teacher and researcher Miguel Angel Muñoz explains the latest research on how being bilingual affects your brain, ahead of a British Council seminar in Cardiff on whether learning a foreign language makes you smarter. A few more myths about speakers of multiple languages. Does multilingualism cause language delays and identity problems? The British Council's Nayr Ibrahim busts a few more myths about speakers of multiple languages. Myth: Multilingualism causes language delay Raising children bilingually is sometimes believed to cause language delay.
This misconception is based on a separate underlying proficiency (SUP) hypothesis. KQED Public Media for Northern CA. There was a direct correlation between the children who’d heard a lot of parent talk and how prepared they were to learn once they arrived at school.
Patricia Kuhl: The linguistic genius of babies. Alison Gopnik: What do babies think? How young children learn English as another language.