Kensuke´s Kingdom Project

   

      Kensuke´s Kingdom is an adventure story indicated for more or less 6th grade students. It contents more complex vocabulary and structures, but it is counteracted with its dynamism and how fun it is, so kids (and grown ups too) will enjoy it if we find a correct way to work on it.

    As you already know if you have read the book, it is based on a long trip across the sea, where the characters visit the five continents. So, taking into account this structure where we find numerous and a great diversity of places, we can know a little bit better each place by searching for further information about each place. The project of each child can be focus on whatever they prefer: inhabitants , food, geography, economy...

In order to build a global view of the places and to have a time/place sequence as a main common reference, a good website we can use is...

http://www.tripline.net/

Here you can check an example of what it could be done by working with this website, although you have lots of different possibilities working with TRIPLINE:

http://www.tripline.net/trip/Kensuke%C2%B4s_Kingdom_story-7731502434411011912BA55D7A38C16D?n=47

Nursery Rhymes 2

      Related to the last post about how important are Nursery Rhymes in early stages of learning, here you can read a compilation of ....

10 NURSERY RHYMES 

FOR 10 COMMON TOPICS AT INFANT SCHOOL

• NUMBERS:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0NHrFNZWh0

• COLOURS:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRNy2i75tCc

• FOOD & yes/no question and answer :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frN3nvhIHUk

• BODY:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZanHgPprl-0

• WEATHER:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcW9Ct000yY

• PARTS OF THE CITY:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgTkKGM0TWE

• ALPHABET:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8JmK5z6QD4

• VOWELS:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fb3Pdt8kxg

• TRANSPORTS:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfWTi7MQJVg

• SEASONS, AUTUMN:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPm7JTGIHcA

You can find further ideas reading the book Phonological Awareness Package, written by Jane Sheils & Yvonne Sawyers.

Nursery Rhymes

When we are trying to introduce a new language to very young learners, a funny and effective way to do it is by working with Nursery Rhymes. To give you an idea of what this first level of learning means:

They can start to see structures and vocabulary but at the same time they work with rhymes and rhythms, something attractive as well as important to get used to hearing a new language.

Jolly Songs

    

    

    Related to the last post about Jolly Phonics, in this video you will find all the songs they have used for each letter with with rhythm and lyrics:

Jolly Phonics Workbook

    Learning English also through phonics!

Jolly Phonics is a "fun and child centred approach to teaching literacy through synthetic phonics". They have a great variety of resources that can be used to teach or learn English.

Jolly Phonics Workbook is an example of it. They divide the sounds into groups and in this way the are moving little by little from simple sounds towards more complex ones:

They include materials and activities to work on each letter and on each group: worksheets, games... You can know more about their projects here: 

http://jollylearning.co.uk/overview-about-jolly-phonics/

Based on the structure of this book and based also on its sequence, I have made a structured sequence to work each letter and each group:

 

Who said it would be easy...?

     Teaching a new language is not an easy thing to do, but we are here to discover that it is not as difficult as we think. We are studying a second language for years because the Education System offers us this opportunity, but until now we have seen that after years we still finish the compulsory education or we start the Superior Education without enough knowledge to use fluently the English language (of course that is a general idea, it does not mean that it is always like that).

In order to fix this gap in the Educational system, the institutions are focusing on the improvement of teaching and planning the English lessons. English is being integrated more globally in the curriculum, so that lots of schools are now considered as Bilingual schools because of the use of other languages to teach some subjects.

Therefore, it is also being a revolution in Education Faculties where the specialisation in English has taken a new approach. We have to break with the exclusive use of textbooks, and start promoting some essential skills: oral communication fluency, comprehension while reading and writing, ICT integration for learning... 

We should help our students to achieve an effective level of English to enable them to defend themselves in any moment of their lives!