Sunday, April 10, 2016

Having Fun with Young Learners - Report on Zhivka Ilieva’s Session

Ms Zhivka Ilieva commenced her talk by outlining the importance of implementing fun while teaching young and very young learners. Thus, they develop interest, motivation and positive attitude to the subject. What is more, children have fun as they are playing, singing, listening to and taking part in stories, and acting out rhymes. She afterwards explained that the aim of her session is to fully demonstrate activities for the learners that in turn can be used either as a base for a lesson or as additional material.

                                                                                                                 Photo by Elpiniki Meimaroglou

Children need to be actively engaged in order to learn. Very young learners learn by doing whereas young learners need rich visualization and fun. In that case, the imput has to activate various types of intelligence, of memory, various sensors: to be auditory, visual, through movement so as to provoke positive emotions in order to be memorable.

How can we engage young learners into stirring activities when get bored or sleepy? Are they too noisy and want them to burn some energy and get them silenced? Well, all you can do is to get them involved. Children just love songs and especially funny ones. A good example of a song is “Do you like broccoli?” This particular song Mrs Ilieva explained that practices grammar mostly using the Present Simple in questions with short answers and vocabulary connected to food and also develops children’s creativity. Moreover, this kind of activity can be realized both at Kindergarten and at the Primary School in order to practice more effectively the Present Tense.

Using a range of books is as well of utmost importance according to Mrs Ilieva as they can easily grab children’s attention and bring creativity into classroom. However it is advisable to choose books based on their age, level and type of intelligence. Use music to stir joy or use mathematics to stir their little practical minds. Some of the recommended books are: “Goodnight Moon” by Margaret Wise Brown, “Mine” by Nicola Baxter and “What Lola wants…Lola gets” by Salariya. She also pointed out that an excellent idea is to let them turn the title of the book into a tongue twister which is something that children find extremely creative and enjoyable.

                                                                                                                               Photo by Elpiniki Meimaroglou
                                                                                                      Have you got hyper-active young learners in your class? Actually that is a great advantage if you are thinking of bringing up a new activity in class. Get them started by dice games. Dice games can be organized as long as they are two sets of dice. One for the object of the sentence and the other one for the adverbial of the structure (There is/are …in the…). Teachers in Primary Schools can include nouns in plural and uncountable nouns as well as to practice the indefinite pronoun “some”.

She then continued her really informative and educative talk by referring to the significance of using Physical Activities as well. Does the “Imperative” troubles your little precious learners? There is no need to worry. Just use Body Movement and start giving orders like sit down, stand up, hop 1, 2, 3 or go left and right.

Ms Ilieva’s motivating and fruitful session was completed by underlining the importance of putting all the activities offered into action. As they can be adapted to any text and to various types of learners young and very young ones. The purpose of which is to enable them to learn the language with as little efforts as possible in a funny atmosphere.



Report by Dimitra Christopoulou

1 comment:

  1. great interview, i share this video with belarusian girls, they are very interested!thanks!

    ReplyDelete