Fun ways to teach

Refuse to Be a Boring Teacher: 15 Ways to Have More Fun

By Saga Briggs

October 10th, 2015 Features

We’ve all had that teacher–the one who speaks in a monotone voice and reads aloud from the textbook. And we’ve all had the opportunity to not be that teacher. We’ve even had our moments, recognising that flash of interest in our students’ eyes, smiling as the bell rings because the energy is so high and no one wants the period to end. How do we extend these moments? How do we create an environment that keeps students stimulated and craving more? How do we have more fun?

One study of student boredom suggested that almost 60% of students find at least half their lectures boring, with about 30% claiming to find most or all of their lectures boring.

“Although a range of factors may contribute to these findings, they do prompt the question of what it is about the learning experience that might be deemed ‘boring,'” says Dr Sandi Mann, a senior lecturer in occupational psychology at the University of Central Lancashire.

Mann and her colleagues found that students adopt a variety of strategies to cope with boring lectures. The most popular are daydreaming (75%), doodling (66%), chatting to friends (50%), sending texts (45%), and passing notes to friends (38%). Over a quarter of students leave the lecture at the mid-session break.

“This ‘class cutting’ is potentially the most serious consequence, since previous research has shown a link between attendance and grades.”

One of the simplest and most effective ways to prevent boredom is to have fun yourself. If you are having a good time, chances are your students are too.

In a 2002 paper called The Ripple Effect: Emotional Contagion and its Influence on Group Behavior, Yale University researcher Sigal G. Barsade separated 94 business students into small groups, each with the same hypothetical task of allocating employee bonuses. Barsade secretly planted one student in each group to act out a different emotion: enthusiasm, hostility, serenity, or depression. When the infiltrator was enthusiastic, he smiled often, looked intently into people’s eyes, and spoke rapidly. When he feigned depression, he spoke slowly, avoided eye contact, and slouched in his seat.

Discover more about studying a Certificate III in Education online

Barsade measured participants’ moods before and after the exercise and found that students who caught the actor’s positive emotions were perceived by others and by themselves as more competent and cooperative. The positive groups also believed they were more collegial than those in the bad-mood groups. But when Barsade asked the students what influenced their performance, they attributed it to their skills. “People don’t realise they are being influenced by others’ emotions,” she says.

Mimicry is a basic biological mechanism that may confer an evolutionary advantage, says Peter Totterdell, PhD, senior research fellow at the University of Sheffield in England. “It helps you understand what another person is feeling and thinking–even when she’s trying to hide it. ”

And research shows that if you can put your students in a good mood, they will learn more too.

“Brain research suggests that fun is not just beneficial to learning but, by many reports, required for authentic learning and long-term memory,” writes Sean Slade for The Answer Sheet. Neurologist and educator Judy Willis’s book “Research-Based Strategies to Ignite Student Learning: Insights from a Neurologist and Classroom Teacher” (ASCD, 2006) is one of many that have highlighted the learning benefits of fun:

“The truth is that when the joy and comfort are scrubbed from the classroom and replaced with homogeneity, and when spontaneity is replaced with conformity, students’ brains are distanced from effective information processing and long-term memory storage.”

“The highest-level executive thinking, making of connections, and “aha” moments are more likely to occur in an atmosphere of “exuberant discovery,” where students of all ages retain that kindergarten enthusiasm of embracing each day with the joy of learning. ”

So fun actually seems to promote learning by increasing dopamine, endorphins, and oxygen in the brain. The question is, how can we make teaching more enjoyable for ourselves in order to make learning fun for students?

How to Have More Fun Teaching

1. Discover new things together.

It’s much more fun for both parties when students and teachers learn new things together. Your job is, of course, to educate, but why can’t that process include the joy of shared discovery? Make a point each day of letting down your authoritative guard, humbling yourself, and enjoying the lifelong journey together–even if it’s just for a few mintues.

2. Incorporate mystery into your lessons.

Learning is the most fun when it’s surprising. Don’t just disseminate information; cloak it in mystery. Highlight the weird, the unusual, the unique. Ask questions. Start with a curious detail that can only be addressed by diving into the background of the subject and thoroughly exploring it. Pose a mystery at the beginning of the course and let your students work towards solving it throughout the term.

3. Be goofy; show you care.

Let loose; laugh; make fun of yourself. Don’t worry about sacrificing your authority. In fact, the latest research says authority stems from showing you care about your students, and making them laugh and feel good is one way to do that.

4. Participate in projects.

I had a creative writing professor at uni who would bring his own material to class for the students to workshop. It was great fun for all of us, and enjoyable for him as well. Stepping down to our level and actually participating in an activity he assigned himself made us all more engaged in the task because he was willing to be a part of it.

5. Avoid “going through the motions.”

If you feel yourself slipping into a rut, spending the same hours exactly the same way each day, stop and reassess your teaching process. It’s so easy to let it all become automatic, especially after twenty-plus years in the field, and to use the same lessons and techniques year after year with different students. But if it’s not fun for you, it won’t be fun for your students either. Make an effort to be fresh, try new things, take risks, make mistakes, enjoy the moment.

6. Flip your lessons.

Flipping your lessons will help you avoid boring in-class activities. If students watch lectures or correct their own homework the night before, you can spend the course period focusing on deeper learning. Everyone will appreciate the chance to reflect on, instead of repeat, the material.

7. Review–but don’t repeat–material.

It’s important for learning and memory to review new material regularly and to integrate it into the bigger picture shaped by old material. Spend an hour or two each week reviewing material from the past few weeks, but always position it within old material so that students see how it all fits together. Simply repeating new information represents a missed learning opportunity.

8. Share your passions.

Show students how you have fun. Passion is contagious. If you’re having a good time, chances are your students will too.

9. Laugh at your students’ jokes.

The best teachers I’ve ever had got a genuine kick out of their students. It’s one of the best ways to ensure teachers and students have fun: enjoy one another.

10. Replace lectures with conversations.

Why should teaching be so passive? Forget the sage on the stage and engage your students in a casual conversation like you would a good friend. This doesn’t necessarily mean asking more questions, but it does require a stylistic shift whereby you and your students are actively exchanging ideas–not just responding to them.

11. Put on a performance.

In his books and workshops, Doug Lemov talks about what pace to move around the room, what language to use when praising a student, how to adjust the angle of your head to let students know you’re looking at them. Teaching, he says, is “a performance profession.” You don’t have to be theatrical (though that might help), but you do have to be self-aware.

12. Enjoy yourself.

People with high confidence–people we respect and listen to–tend to have one important trait in common: they enjoy themselves. Quite literally. You’ll have a significantly better time teaching if you work on nurturing your personal relationship with yourself. Your students will have a better time, too.

13. Make yourself available.

Don’t go to the teacher’s lounge during lunch; stay in your room and invite students to eat lunch with you. Keep your doors open after the bell rings at the end of the day. Make yourself available online for part of the evening. Hold one-on-one and group office hours. Invite students to your home for workshops or end-of-course celebrations.

14. Try being a student again.

Take a seat in the audience and let your students teach you for the day. Spend a week doing your own assignments. Let students grade you on projects or presentations.

15. Don’t take yourself–or your subject–too seriously.

One complaint I hear from students is that teachers don’t sympathise with the fact that their course isn’t the only course students are taking. Students have to balance assignments and material from several courses at once (you had to do the same thing not so long ago). This doesn’t mean loosening your rules or being lenient on late work; it means acknowledging that students have interests and priorities that might not line up with yours. Try to be understanding, and even express interest in other courses students are taking. Think of it as an opportunity to strengthen students’ grasp of your subject by relating it to other disciplines.

About Saga Briggs

Saga Briggs is an author at InformED. You can follow her on Twitter@sagamilena or read more of her writing here.

20 interactive teaching activities for in the interactive classroom

Ruben Knapen — Jun 13, 2018

Interactive teaching is all about instructing the students in a way they are actively involved with their learning process. There are different ways to create an involvement like this. Most of the time it’s through

teacher-student interaction
student-student interaction
the use of audio, visuals, video
hands-on demonstrations and exercises

You encourage your students to be active members of your class, thinking on their own, using their brains, resulting in long-term memory retention. Not only the students’ knowledge will improve, but their interest, strength, knowledge, team spirit and freedom of expression will increase as well.

In this blog post, I will talk about the use of interactive methods for teaching, encouraging more dedication towards the lesson material. We will see some interactive teaching tools, interactive teaching ideas, and interactive teaching games.
Not only will I talk about the use of interactive methods of teaching, but I’ll also give you some examples of methods used in the present classroom as well.

Ready? Let’s find out some interactive classroom activities to engage your pupils!

3 Effective interactive teaching strategies to encourage speech in your classroom

First, I want to put some activities in the spotlight. The following interactive student activities are three of the most effective ways to encourage more speech in your classroom.

1. Think, pair and share

Set a problem or a question around a certain topic, and pair up your students. Give each pair of students enough time so they can reach a proper conclusion, and permit the kids to share their conclusion in their voice. This way your students will be engaged, communicating, and remember more of the class than ever before.

2. Brainstorming

Interactive brainstorming is mostly performed in group sessions. The process is useful for generating creative thoughts and ideas. Brainstorming helps students learn to work together, and above all, learn from each other. You’ll be surprised by all the great ideas they come up with! Check out these 8 fun brainstorming apps you can use in your classroom, or use BookWidgets’ Mindmap widget to structure thinking.

3. Buzz session

Participants come together in session groups that focus on a single topic. Within each group, every student contributes thoughts and ideas. Encourage discussion and collaboration among the students within each group. Everyone should learn from each other’s input and experiences. As a teacher, you could give your students some keywords to spark the conversation.

Of course, there are many other interactive teaching ideas as well. I split up the activities in different categories:

Individual student activities
Student pair activities
Student group activities
Interactive game activities

Individual student activities

4. Exit slips

These are best used at the end of the class session. You’ll ask the students to write for one minute on a specific question. It might be generalized to “what was the most important thing you learned today”. Then, you can decide if you are going to open up a conversation about it in your next class. You can ask them if they still remember what they wrote down. Need a digital exit slip template? Try this one from BookWidgets and learn more about the possibilities of an exit slip. Looking for inspiration? Check this out! You will find 60 examples of digital exit tickets.

5. Misconception check

Discover students’ misconceptions. See if students can identify what is the correct answer when given a false fact. It’s useful when going over a previous lesson. It encourages students to think deeply and wager all the possibilities.

6. Circle the questions

Make a worksheet or a survey that has a list of questions (make them specific) about your topic, and ask students to circle (or check) the ones they don’t know the answers to. Then, let them turn in the paper.

Create corners concerning different questions that were circled. Let your students work on the extra exercises and explanation in the corners, individually. As your students will all have circled different questions, you have to give each student a different and personalized order to visit the corners.

7. Ask the winner

Ask students to silently solve a problem on the board. After revealing the answer, instruct those who got it right to raise their hands (and keep them raised). Then, all other students have to talk to someone with a raised hand to better understand the question and how to solve it next time.

Student pair activities

8. Pair-share-repeat

After a Think-pair-share experience, which I’ve written about in the first interactive learning lesson idea, you can also ask students to find a new partner and share the wisdom of the old partnership to this new partner.

9. Teacher and student

Let students brainstorm the main points of the last lesson. Then, pair up your students and assign them 2 roles. One of them is the teacher, and the other the student. The teacher’s job is to sketch the main points, while the student’s job is to cross off points on his list as they are mentioned and come up with 2 to 3 points that the teacher missed.

10. Wisdom from another

After an individual brainstorm or creative activity, pair students to share their results. Then, call for volunteers who found their partner’s work to be interesting or exemplary. Students are often more willing to share the work of fellow students publicly than their work. Of course, you can always encourage sharing their objectives as well.

11. Forced debate

Let students debate in pairs. Students must defend the opposite side of their personal opinion. It encourages them to step away from their own beliefs and teaches them to look through a different colored glass once in a while.

Variation: one half of the class takes one position, the other half takes the other position. Students line up and face each other. Each student may only speak once so that all students on both sides can engage the issue.

12. Optimist/Pessimist

In pairs, students take opposite emotional sides of a case study, statement, or topic. Encourage them to be empathic and truly “live” the case study. You’ll discover some good solution proposals and your students will learn some exceptional social skills.

13. Peer review writing task

To assist students with a writing assignment, encourage them to exchange drafts with a partner. The partner reads the essay and writes a three-paragraph response: the first paragraph outlines the strengths of the essay, the second paragraph discusses the essay’s problems, and the third paragraph is a description of what the partner would focus on in revision if it were her essay. Students can learn a lot from each other and themselves as well! Here are 10 more creative self-assessment ideas.

Student group activities

14. Board rotation

This interactive learning strategy is even more interactive than others! Divide your class into different groups of students and assign them to each of the boards you’ve set up in the room. Assign one topic/question per board. After each group writes an answer, they rotate to the next board. Here, they write their answer below the first answer of the previous group. Let them go around the room until all the groups have covered all the boards. Not that many boards in your classroom? Try using tablets and BookWidgets’ interactive whiteboard.

15. Pick the Winner

Divide the class into groups and let them work on the same topic/problem. Let them record an answer/strategy on paper or digitally. Then, ask the groups to switch with a nearby group and let them evaluate their answer. After a few minutes, allow each set of groups to merge and ask them to select the best answer from the two choices, which will be presented to the complete class.

16. Movie Application

In groups, students discuss examples of movies that made use of a concept or event discussed in class, trying to identify at least one way the movie makers got it right, and one way they got it wrong. Think about movies showing historical facts, geographical facts, biographies of famous people, …

Interactive game activities

Create an interactive classroom full of interactive learning games. Games are so much fun for students since it doesn’t feel like learning. With BookWidgets, you can make interactive learning games like crossword puzzles, pair matching games, bingo games, jigsaw puzzles, memory games, and many more in minutes (and there’s a Google Classroom integration as well).

17. Crossword puzzle

The crossword game is perfect to use as repetition activity. Choose a list of words and their description, and BookWidgets creates an interactive crossword for you. The crossword game transforms these boring lessons into a fun experience. Here you can read more about how to create them and for which topics you can use them (not only for teaching languages)!

18. Scrabble

Use the chapter (or course) title as the pool of letters from which to make words (e.g., mitochondrial DNA), and allow teams to brainstorm as many words relevant to the topic as possible. You can also actually play scrabble and ask students to form words from the newly learned vocabulary.

19. Who/what am I?

Tape a term or name on the back of each student. You can also tape it on their forehead. Each student walks around the room, asking “yes or no” questions to the other students in an effort to guess the term. Of course, the term has something to do with your lesson topic.

20. Bingo

Bingo is a fun game that can be used for all sorts of exercises: language exercises, introductory games, math exercises, etc. Take a look at this blog post with all the different bingo possibilities here. You’ll be surprised about how many interactive lesson activities you can do with just one game.

Want to create a bingo game yourself? You can start for free right here:

Create a Bingo Game

Wrap up

That’s it! Like in any list, you could add many other interactive lesson ideas. I could go on for quite a while myself. But what about you? Share your creative, interactive classroom ideas in our Facebook Group. This way, we can build out this article with many more great ideas!

One more thing… Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter! 😉

13 proven ways and fun games.

Learning to read while playing. How to teach a child to read?

When you teach a child to read, the most important thing is to explain why he needs it. That is, it is necessary to create motivation, to interest the baby. And what is there to interest a child in, if not with an exciting, exciting game?

What letter is this?

You don't have to buy expensive manuals or lotto to learn letters - you can do a lot of things in just five minutes on your own. The main thing is that the games are varied and that you and your child like it. It is very important for children to feel everything, and letters can be folded from any materials at hand: counting sticks, matches, pieces of pasta, sculpt them from plasticine...

Look for a letter! If the child likes to trace and paint over, then write on a piece of paper 15 letters similar in spelling, but of different sizes and colors: A, P, N, L, D, G, or W, E, W, H, C, Y, or B, C, F, R, I, S. You can come up with a variety of tasks - circle only A, or circle all the same ones in the same color, or connect the same letters with paths, or underline some, circle others, and cross out others ...

Letters on cards. You can make several sets with the same cards, on each of which write one letter. You and your child take a set of cards each (start literally with 2-3 letters, and first with vowels), say a sound, for example, "O" and show such a card. The kid is looking for the same one. Then you make a sound, and he himself looks for the right card. Then you can play "silent movie" - round your mouth as if you want to say "Oh", and the baby guesses what sound you were going to make. You stretch your lips with a tube, as if you are going to say "U", and the baby says "U" and looks for a card with this letter.

What letter does it begin with? We mastered this game in three years. At first, I specifically singled out the first letter (more precisely, the sound): "Ah-a-a-watermelon, what does it start with? And what letter does u-duck begin with? And sh-sh-sh-hat?"

Guess what I said? At about the age of three, we also started playing games with syllables. In order to read by syllables, it is useful to be able to break any word into syllables and then assemble it into a whole. I spoke first with small pauses, then with medium ones, then with large ones: "Ma. Ma. What will happen? That's right, mom!" Why this game? And then that sometimes children who are intensively taught to read can pronounce a word by syllables, but at the same time they do not understand what kind of word they read.

Kosh. Ka?
Ma. Shi. On the?
Ka. Sha?
RU. bash. Ka?
Av. That. Bus?

Continue the word. I say the beginning of the word, and the child guesses what's next. "Kosh?" — "Ka!" Galya says happily.

— So-ba? - Ka!
- Before? — Mick! Road! Board!
— Ry? - Ba!
— De? - Darling! Wood! Village!
— Ko-ro? - Wa! Cow! Crown! Box!

Objects and words

It is very important for a child to understand the difference between words and the real objects that denote them. "ONION" is a word, and it does not pinch its eyes, and it is better to move away from a real onion when mom cuts it.

If the kid likes to count everything, then you can count how many letters are in the word. At first we played like this with written words, and then Grishka learned to determine the length of short words by ear. When the baby understands how to play, offer to compare which word is longer: "onion" or "potato", "umbrella" or "umbrella", "snake" or "worm", "pencil" or "pencil"?

Zaitsev Cubes. I tried to teach Grishka using Zaitsev's cubes, but this did not arouse enthusiasm in him. He was more interested in sound: Grishka was ready to open each cube to see what was knocking or ringing inside.

On the one hand, the idea of syllables on blocks is brilliant. On the other hand, I personally liked the cubes much more than my children - I don’t know what the secret is ... Probably, in a large group of children, the cubes work better, but at home this is not the most convenient tool. Ordinary lotto cards suited us better.

However, sometimes Grishka agreed to read cubes a little.

Magnetic alphabet. Our magnetic letters hung not on the blackboard, but on the refrigerator, and we read a couple of words almost every day. Sometimes Grisha himself put together some words and asked me to read what he got.

Guess the whole word. I made this game for my son myself: on the left side of the piece of paper I write 4-5 short words, and on the right - pictures for them, but in a different order. For example, whale, cat, house, smoke, forest, poppy, cancer, elephant, table, chair, window, stork, oak, sea, fish, water, knife, ball, ball.

Grishka reads the word, circles it and connects it with the correct picture. It was in this way that he learned to recognize the whole word and understood the essence of reading. Some people think that it is necessary to learn how to combine letters into syllables, but it seems to me that it is much more important that the child understands the essence - these letters mean some real object!

Find pairs. We had a bunch of old lotto cards lying around at our house. At first, I simply signed all the words with a felt-tip pen on the reverse side. Then I chose a dozen paired pictures from them, and we started playing like this. I put the cards with the pictures down, and with the letters, therefore, up. Grishka looks for the same words, reads, turns the pictures over, checking himself, and takes a couple of pictures for himself. Grishka liked this game because the mountain of cards grew very quickly.

"That's how much I won!" he said proudly.

A funny book. We take several sheets of paper, fold them in half and sew them into a book. Then we turn the book with the fold up and cut the pages into 3 or 4 parts. On each strip we write a word to make a phrase.

Mother	brews	delicious	soup.
Male	cuts	thick	oak
Anya	eating	own	pie.
Cat	sees	white	mushroom.
Vasya	colors	old	fence.
Masha	washes	new	table.
Peter	sawing	blue	chair.

You can read each phrase aloud to your child, but it is much more fun to turn the page not entirely, but in parts. Then you get funny phrases:

Mother	washes	blue	pie.
Male	sawing	new	table.
Cat	brews	old	fence.

You can color the vertical parts in different colors: the subject in one color, the predicate in another, the object in a third... You can immediately emphasize them, as in school - the child will remember this easily, even if you do not pay special attention to it.

Notes and letters

Many children enjoy looking for prizes and treasures. First, you buy a dozen simple envelopes and put simple notes in each envelope like: "Look in the closet." You can put the prize right in the closet, or you can leave the second envelope there: "Look for dad on the table", "Look in the kitchen under the chair."

As your child learns to read, you can leave him more complex notes.

When the child begins to read short phrases smartly, you can send him letters - from a gnome, from a cat, from fairy-tale characters - as you like.

Well, then you need to find a simple book that the child would be interested in reading, start reading aloud - and leave unread in a conspicuous place. Some children start reading from thin baby books. Other thin books are despised and want to immediately read real ones, that is, thick ones. My brother, for example, started reading from a thick volume of Nosov's stories.

It was boring for my son to read the alphabet, where Nina and Inna are at the window. In many alphabets and primers, one letter is added per lesson, but this was not so important for Grishka, because he knew almost all the letters. And I began to invent short stories for him, and those that would be interesting for him to read - about the boys who built a hut, about the ship that sailed to Africa. I wrote these stories in block letters on a regular sheet of paper, and a new word appeared no earlier than Grisha had read all the previous ones. The son tried to read as quickly as possible to find out what happened next.

The first experience of reading is very difficult for a child, especially while he reads each word for a long time and with difficulty. Help him, support him at this stage! Many children, knowing how to put letters into words, do not read themselves because they are embarrassed by adults - they are afraid that they will be laughed at or teased ...

Whatever you teach your children, the result will not be one, but several. Suppose you are teaching a toddler to read. The first result is obvious - the baby began to read on his own. Hooray! The second result: the child was able to change his attitude to learning in general, for example, now he believes that learning something new is very interesting (or, conversely, that it is very boring). Outcome 3: Your relationship with your child changes. If you successfully taught him to read, but it was given at the cost of threats, screams, scandals, then perhaps it was better not to teach - but to remain friends ...

Best Practices for Learning English for Children

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Methods of learning English for children

Every parent wants their child to grow up as an independent, diversified personality. In a world where information and social networks play the main role, it is possible and necessary to obtain new knowledge from different sources. To do this, it is useful to master the main international language - English. There are many advantages of learning this language, and we will not focus on them. Instead, let's figure out how to help your child learn English.

Encourage your child to learn the language of Shakespeare from an early age. After all, a person receives half of the skills necessary for communication by the age of four, and the full volume by eight. Therefore, the question arises, what are the best methods of learning English for children? Let's find out.

Immediately, we note that the methods that will be discussed have proven themselves on the positive side. Therefore, on the one hand, it does not matter by which method to teach a child a foreign language. But on the other hand, it is necessary to select a technique based on the age of the characteristics of the child.

The easiest way to learn a language is if a child is taught it from the age of 3-4. Do not be discouraged if this moment is missed - some methods involve working with children up to preschool age.

Teaching methods fall into two broad categories: group and individual. To understand what form of activity is right for your child, look at his level of sociability. Group lessons are suitable for open, active children, and individual lessons for calm children.

Methods of learning English for children are based on 5 principles:

Natural. The main thing is that the child learns new knowledge naturally, in a comfortable environment. So he can progress faster.
Interesting. Awakening the child's interest in the language is the main task of the teacher. Otherwise, the child will form a stereotype that English is boring, tedious and difficult. This will negate the efforts of parents and teachers.
Sequence. You need to start with the basics. You need to pay attention to all aspects at the same time: grammar, speaking practice, reading. If you focus only on the rules, the child will not learn to speak English. But it will please knowledge of grammar.
Perseverance. Sometimes, children are capricious and do not do what is required of them. In such situations, it is worth being tough, but do not go too far.
Game uniform. The main learning tool for a child is play. With its help, it is easiest for children to start learning English. Let's talk about games separately.

Most children's methods of learning English are based on the game activity of children. As mentioned above, the game is a tool for the development of the child, with its help he learns the world. Therefore, it is logical to use the game to learn English. The best methods for learning English for children include different types of play situations. With their help, the child will develop the necessary skills quickly and in a fun way. There are four types of educational games:

Situational games are games that reproduce situations from real life. Children try on various social roles and act according to a specific task. At the same time, at certain moments, the child needs to improvise, connect imagination and creativity.
Competitive games create situations that test how children have learned the material they have learned. At the same time, elements of rivalry are included in the game. There are many options here: team board games, crossword puzzles, linguistic puzzles. The winner is the one who knows grammar and vocabulary better.
Music games are all kinds of songs, dances, round dances. If, according to the terms of the game, you need to act with a partner, then the child, in addition, develops communication skills.
The conditions of creative games are limited only by the imagination of the teacher and the children themselves. They include elements of other types of games and are held in the form of drawing competitions, applications, writing poetry in English.

Remember that regardless of the method of learning, the main thing is practice. Without it, neither the future poet nor the born linguist will speak the language of Shakespeare. Therefore, often talk to your child in English, if the level of language proficiency allows it. The result will not keep you waiting.

English for children: learning methods and their features

There are 5 main teaching methods. We will dwell on each of them in more detail.

Zaitsev Method

This is a method for babies who have reached 3 years of age. Children play with cubes on which not letters are written, but words and syllables. At the same time, the cubes differ from each other in weight, color, and sounds made. This helps children learn to follow the correct word order in a sentence. Having developed this skill at an early age, the child will master the first lessons from the school curriculum with ease. In addition, at a subconscious level, the difference between sounds is assimilated, and speech skills develop in parallel.

Game method

Classes are held as follows: the teacher lays out figures of animals or household items in front of the children. After that, he calls them in English, and the children repeat after him. Then the children draw one animal or object on the table and try to remember its name. When a child remembers about half of the names of objects, the teacher tries to build a simple dialogue with him. So children gradually master pronunciation and oral speech. You can engage in such a program with children from one year old.

Doman Method

The method is based on the use of children's visual memory. The child is shown cards on which the object and its name are depicted. This makes it easier for children to memorize new words. The technique is suitable for children up to 6 years.

Project method

The method resembles school lessons with the difference that the teacher chooses a topic based on its interest for children. This is how several lessons pass, after which the students write a test task on the topic. The technique is designed for children from 4 years old.

Combined methods

As the name implies, these classes combine the advantages of the previous methods. Children work on grammar, play, draw. With this approach, the lessons become more diverse, and the children like it.

How to choose a technique?

Choosing the best English learning method for kids is easier than you think. When choosing, you need to start from the age and level of development of the child. In addition, consider his preferences and features. It is very important for a child that learning is interesting and fun. It is easier to interest a child in learning English if he is placed in comfortable conditions.

Therefore, choose a method taking into account the nature of the baby: a sociable child will like group lessons, and a shy child will like one-on-one lessons with a teacher, an active child will like playful forms, and a calm one will like something more meditative. The choice of methods allows you to take into account these points and choose the form of education that suits your child specifically.

Other recommendations

In order for your child to learn English faster, you need to create a comfortable environment for him at home. The following tips will help you:
Do not compare your child's progress with other children's progress. Everyone has a different ability to learn languages. It is logical that someone can speak English faster.
Remove from the child's field of vision everything that is associated with the school: notebooks, pens, pencil cases, rulers. Make English lessons interesting. And the school is often associated with concepts that are opposite in meaning.
Do not examine your offspring. He does not study at the university, but studies a foreign language, because he is interested in it.
Do not overload your child with grammar. He still won't understand. Plus, children's perception is arranged in such a way that patterns line up by themselves. Therefore, if you want to teach your child to speak English, just surround him with this language.
Focus on visuals. So the baby quickly remembers words and grammatical constructions.

There are several methods of learning English for children. You need to choose a teaching method based on the age and inclinations of the child. This approach is needed so that your offspring is interested in learning English, and he does not perceive such lessons as another “obligation” like semolina. If it was possible to arouse interest in the baby, then all that remains for parents is to watch their child master the language of Shakespeare and rejoice. But they can still help the child. You should create a comfortable environment for him and at home. The tips mentioned above will help. In addition, if the parents themselves have at least a basic knowledge of the language, they can make a feasible contribution to the child's learning English.