Lesson 3-2 The Second lesson - Reviewing the Twelve Months and your Birthday...

Months, Birthdays and Teaching Ordinals: Can you remember your own birthday?

Today was a rainy day and 'pool' (swimming class) was cancelled so we did our classes on the regular schedule for the day. After our customary greetings to start the class was done we skipped the review of the numbers, in 10's, since the kids had seemed to be satisfied with their memory of it.

 

 

Getting straight into the CD, we had the kids listen again to the 12 months in order. We also used another song called the Calendar Song and the usual Months chant on the Eigo Noto CD to keep the kids up to pace. We had a request from one class for a little review on the items below as well.

The kids got used to seeing the monthly holiday/events flashcards (which were used to pair with just the plain month to month flashcards in the last lesson) so they were used again just for a short mini quiz to see how well the kids had remembered as a whole group. Generally, they did quite well and were ready for a little memory game in the textbook called "What's missing?" I've seen and actually done this game with students quite often in years past. This game is often used with flashcards cards on the board and while the students close their eyes you can take one flashcard off the board, they open their eyes again, and then see if they remember the name of that card. We decided to use the event cards for this game to give a little challenge since the regular cards would have the name of the months on them and our other months flashcards had the number of the month on them and the Japanese kanji for 'month.' Also, to make things interesting and to give the children a chance for some 'thinking time' we had asked the students to just raise their hand instead of blurting out the answer. Of course, they were praised for being the first, "You're first...you're second!" and so on until most of the class had their hands up. At that point we would cue the class to say in unison the 'missing month.'

After the game, I was quite happy to tell the kids we would be playing another game and that this one would be a lot more fun. It's the 'Keyword Game' and the same procedure as in the Grade 5 curriculum and a little bit like 'Snap!' or 'Karuta' in Japanese. Now I think I've seen this game somewhere before but I just can't remember where. A lot of ESL games seem to be very similar to others but they are usually very fun and trying to find the origins of these many games can be like the task of trying to find the origins of the 'sit-up.' But this game is very fun and quite simple, a real up-lifter for any English Lesson, so I have to say if you are an ALT in need of good teaching advise, don't skip this game. The kids love it!

Check out the audio file above to see what I mean. There is another audio file wherein after the game I tried to relate the number of wins to the level of jedi's but only a few kids got it. I'll probably get a few returns to it from the kids next week telling me they got the meaning of it at home after taking some thought about it. The kids know Star Wars is one of my favorite movie series since I've played Darth Vader once or twice before for our famous Halloween Lessons.

Well, today's lesson's main goal was to have the kids say clearly their birthday month and day in English so of course we had to practice the numerical ordinals in English as well. Not an easy task since we've go to include everyone in the class. And, I'm not the type to paste a flashcard up on the board for every piece of English I teach for a few reasons I'll explain in a later post so as you can see there is a lot of writing on the board.

But all in all, it was all practiced and explained with the emphasis on 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, as the main accents to remember.

After that the kids mainly focused on the -th accent and producing it in practice with a quick birthday roll call and review in a chain game. We ended the lesson singing the new song for the chapter, the Months Chant.

 

Eigo Note Book 2 Unit 3 Lesson 3 ...is now ready...

 

Hope your lessons went well!

The ENB

Eigo Note Book 2 Unit 3 Lesson 3...