teaching english to lil cuties--esl tips, tricks, and stories

Leaving here for good...

2007-11-10T10:14:00.000+09:00

Well, my new hosting company allows me to blog directly on my site, so I'm moving over there permanently.
Check out the new blog here. I think I've moved most of the important posts over there.
Also, feel free to pop on by the main website too.

ESL Resources for Mothers

2007-07-27T16:01:00.000+09:00

Many mothers have asked me what they can do to help their children learn English at home. I was always full of ideas and would just tell the mother whatever came to me at the moment.
Finally, I have made an entire section devoted to this on my website.
Check out ESL Resources for Mothers.

Teaching Adults?

2007-05-21T15:37:00.001+09:00

Just in case you're a teacher of adults and you came across my site, I'd like to recommend another site that is more geared towards teaching adults.

ESL Tutor

This site also has a lot of teaching ideas and is a good resource, especially for teaching adults.

been moving, trying to get settled in...

2007-05-07T12:13:00.000+09:00

sorry i haven't updated so long. i haven't added any new pages to the main site either.
i've moved from japan, got married in vegas, stayed with my mom for 2 and a half weeks, went on a hawaii cruise for our honeymoon, and now i'm getting settled in hawaii.
the place that we arranged to rent in hawaii is not working out, so we're looking for a new place. that's been pretty time consuming. i hate it. i really wish that this place had worked out...
but i hope to be back on track real soon with lots more ideas and updates for you.
love,
shannon sensei

letting the cat out of the bag...

2007-03-03T12:19:00.000+09:00

i'm leaving japan and moving to america at the end of the month. i've known this for awhile but i hesitated to write about it as i feared that doing so would somehow decrease my credibility. as in, if i'm not teaching full time, then what i have to say may be less important.
the good part about it is that i will still be teaching. my husband and i are starting a homestay program for mothers who want to come to hawaii. i will teach their kids in our home. i also will have a lot of time to work on the official teach esl to kids website. which is a good thing because i still have so many things to add to it, but just haven't had the time.

recently, someone asked a question using the ask shannon sensei feature on that website about how to find a teaching job in japan. i think that my response was pretty good, so if you're looking for info about how to find a teaching job in japan, click here.

how cute...

2007-02-14T15:50:00.000+09:00

yesterday, one of my students' mother showed me pictures of the little girl at home "playing shannon".
she was sitting on a stool (usually japanese people would sit on the floor) and had a book in her hands that she was showing to some "students". especially cute was that her legs were crossed the way i would do. haha.
and then her mother also told me that the pants she's wearing in the picture are her favorite pants because they look like a style of pants that i wear. so cute.
all of the kids in the class have been recently imitating me. they like to play with the puppets and ask each other questions (the older ones will even prompt the younger ones with the right answer if necessary). and then when the other student answers, they'll go "yay!" the same way that i would. makes me so happy.

i wish this was my story...

2007-01-31T17:27:00.000+09:00

one of my coworkers tells the following story about his class:
he had divided the class into three teams and was getting them to pick team names.
the first group shouted "super tigers!"
the second group shouted "super man!"
and a girl on the third team shouted "supermarket!"

:-)

doing a happy dance

2006-12-20T16:05:00.000+09:00

i'm in the middle of a 3 week vacation now. it just started.
i'll be doing lots of work on my teaching website so check things out over there.

i was good today

2006-11-09T20:20:00.000+09:00

i was a pretty good teacher today.
my morning lesson plan was pretty solid and cohesive. the whole lesson plan was about verbs. and the kids liked it.
and my afternoon class went well too. i did the whole thing about upper and lower case ABCs with a bit of a focus on lower case and first letter phonics. the kids seemed to be having fun and were fairly well focused.
i'm proud.

hi!

2006-10-05T23:24:00.000+09:00

i had thought that eventually i would just delete this blog. the new site that i am using has a blogging feature, but i don't want to take the time to learn how to use it to do what i want to do. i'd rather spend that time creating new content for that site.
so for now i think i'm still going to use this blog for stories about my teaching.
the kids have been driving me right up a wall lately. i hate to admit that i'm losing my patience, but i am. basically, 11/12 of my kids are ready to move up to the next class level. they're opening a new class at the school, and i had been hoping that a large majority of them, if not all, would be able to move up. but i just found out today that only 5 will move up. the rough part is that it's probably going to go by age and the ones who are oldest are not quite the ones who's english is the best and/or who are most ready to move up. that's not to say that i don't think that they will do good in the class, cuz i do, it just means that i am going to end up with a class where half of the kids are older, independent (e.g. potty trained), and proficient in english (for 2 year olds), and the other half are literally going to be little babies. i'm going to have to do a lot of research about handling a class with such different levels.
but i'm happy to start getting more younger kids. they're the ones that i really like. they don't fight as much. haha.
i also got a bit of a promotion at work. in addition to teaching my regular classes, i'll also be developing curriculum and generally be in charge of the youngest two levels of classes. that's pretty exciting.
love,
shannon sensei

sorry all!!

2006-09-25T21:20:00.000+09:00

man, color me embarassed. i tried to post an update a long time ago, but my computer is almost dead (need a new power cord and no money to buy one), so i had to use my husband's computer. his is all in japanese and i couldn't for the life of me figure ot how to change blogger to display in english. i thought i had done all the right things, but turns out i selected "save as draft" instead of "publish post" and so nothing happened.

anyway, i am pleased to announce my new website, teach-esl-to-kids.com .

when i first started the blogger site i had hoped to provide a great resource for teachers. i like to think that i've provided some good information, but i know that the format is somewhat lacking and makes it hard to find good information. i came to the conclusion that a more traditional website would be a better way to reach my goals.

go easy on me please. the new site has only been active for a little more than a week. and it's not at all close to being finished. but i think it's a pretty good start so far.

funny punishment

2006-08-31T22:43:00.000+09:00

when i was a child and throwing a temper tantrum, my mom used to give me a great punishment...i had to go to my room "until i could come out with a smile on my face". i remember quite clearly being angry about this and eventually leaving my room with an obviously fake smile.
well, i've got a girl who throws temper tantrums. whenever she didn't get her own way. very spoiled only-child who has never had to share. she would drive me up a wall. i have no tolerance for that type of behavior.
of course, i also didn't have a room i could send her to until she could come out with a smile on her face.
but then one day i decided to ask her if she wanted to go sit in the corner until she could stop crying. she said no. so i said that i wanted to see her happy face.
she gave me that same "fuck you" smile that i used to give my own mother. it made me so happy.
and now it works every time.
Tags: esl preschool, creative punishment

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easy "sea" crafts

2006-08-25T07:44:00.000+09:00

this month, we've got a "sea creature" theme going on at the school and we've done a few crafts to go along with it. i think i've mentioned before that one thing that's easy for the kids but looks a little more polished is to have the kids just paint on something, and then the teacher cuts it out into the desired shape.
anyway, i did that with two things...first i just let them at it with many different colors of paints and when they dried, i cut them into little fish and drew cartoony faces on them. then another day we used dark green paint sponge-stamped onto light green paper and i cut that into seaweed shapes.
but the really great thing we made was squid. the children had to glue a triangle shaped paper onto a square shaped paper. then put a little face (using googly eyes, and foam shapes--circle for the nose and oval for the mouth). then after it dried i hung little ribbons along the bottom for its "legs". this was a great exercise for them because we could review shapes and face parts. we also went through each step one at a time and didn't move on to the next one until everyone was finished. they came out really great and all of the parents were commenting on them. this is the first time that anyone has commented on any of my craft ideas, so i was pretty psyched.
Tags: esl preschool, preschool crafts, crafts for kids

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super simple songs

2006-08-23T18:04:00.000+09:00

devon,over at super simple songs sent me two of their cds to try out in my classes. he's in luck because in addition to my own regular 2 year old preschool class, i've also started teaching the daily music class for 2-4 year olds.
these cds are great. they're a mix of simplified well known songs and originals that are easy as well. i'm currently using 3 of the well known songs--"walking walking", "the wheels on the bus", and "hokey pokey". i like the originals as well, but with the added stress of starting to teach the music class this month, i just didn't have the time to learn the songs well enough.
i think "hokey pokey" is perhaps the best example of how great these cds are. teaching the hokey pokey to kids this young is always fairly difficult. there's the whole "left hand/right hand" thing. kids have a hard time understanding this idea (i'm no expert, but i think at this age level it might even be difficult for native speakers.). but what's great about this version is that instead of using the right hand/left hand terminology, they use "one hand" and "two hands". it makes it really easy for the kids to understand. the music teacher before me would sometimes do the hokey pokey using a more traditional version and it was never a big hit with the kids. but now they are always telling me "i wanna do the hokey pokey". we'll also be using this version at our upcoming picnic.
so check out the website and the cds.
Tags: esl preschool, kids songs, esl songs, simple songs

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sometimes they teach me...

2006-08-10T21:47:00.000+09:00

(sorry i haven't updated in so long. my husband and i have recently discovered the $1.00 video rental store. this has greatly affected my blog writing....)
yesterday i was "horribly mean teacher". recently miona has been goofing off during lessons. she sometimes gets better with "corner" threats, but yesterday she was influencing maya and they were goofing off together. i said, "maya, if you don't stop i'm going to move you to another spot on the carpet." she kept it up and i finally said "maya! elephant!" (meaning that she should go sit on the elephant on the carpet, which was far away from where she was.). she almost cried and i just couldn't force her to do it so i asked if she was going to be a good girl. and she said yes.
then tadashi kept playing with this towel. i said "tadashi, if you don't stop playing with your towel, i'm going to take it away from you." he kept playing and i took it. he immediately started crying and i felt bad cuz maya looked like she wanted to cry too (like she was thinking "why is shannon so mean today?"). so i gave it back fairly quickly.
the problem here was that i wasn't giving them warnings in language that they understood. maya did not understand that i was going to make her move seats. tadashi did not understand that i was going to take his towel away. so this made it all the more shocking when i actually did it.
i realized later in the day that i should have phrased my warnings in more of a question. for example, i should have said "maya, elephant??" and then she would have understood more when i told her to go sit on elephant.
well, lesson learned.

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july's songs

2006-07-17T22:52:00.000+09:00

here's our 4 songs for july:
*mr. sun
*if you're happy and you know it
*5 green and speckled frogs
*wheels on the bus

Tags: esl preschool, children's songs

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thanks to whoever came up with this idea

2006-07-12T17:07:00.000+09:00

we've got this box of index cards at school where we're supposed to fill them out with game ideas and what have you. few people do it regularly and i don't know if anyone actually looks at them. but i do sometimes. and i saw this great idea.
it's a way of teaching first-letter phonics using the song "5 little ducks".
you pick 5 letters and then sing the song like this:

five little letters went out to play
under the bridge and far away
shannon said "sss sss sss sss"
and letter S came running back

it's great because the kids already know the tune to the song so it makes it easy for them to sing along.
i've started doing it this month. the first day, the kids looked at me strangely. but the second day a few of them started to sing along and now they really seem to like the song and get into it.
i'm gonna do it for at least this month and see how it goes.
Tags: esl preschool, teaching phonics

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what's cute???

2006-07-05T17:24:00.000+09:00

usually i'm kind of a baggy t-shirt kind of girl, but it's starting to get hot in japan and today i was wearing a tank top. it's quite skimpy compared to my usual attire and shows off my ample bosom.
today during smile time, maya was standing close to me. suddenly she reached out and started stroking my breast. in perfect english she said "this is cute." then some of the other kids also started doing it saying "this is cute".
i'm still not sure whether she was talking about my shirt or my breasts.
Tags: esl preschool, funny kids

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find your voice

2006-06-28T20:47:00.000+09:00

i think i mentioned before that i have a little puppet that i use to do short conversation with the kids. my puppet is a pink rabbit named yippee skippy. yippee's voice is high pitched and he squeals and jumps around whenever kids speak or especially say the right answer.
awhile ago i was training a new nursery teacher and she liked that idea and wanted to incorporate it into her lessons. problem was, she has a much lower natural voice than i do and so it was really straining her voice to speak all high pitched.
then one day in her classroom i noticed a really cool looking dinosaur. i picked it up and was like "wow! this is a puppet!" her eyes lit up and she said "oh my god. this is the one!"
point here--i'm a pink bunny and she is not. she was trying to go with a character that was against her nature and she was hurting her voice and it wasn't that effective with the kids. so if you're going to use a puppet, try picking a puppet that goes with your personality. it will make things easier on you, and be more realistic to the kids.
Tags: esl preschool, puppets

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making sure everyone gets a turn

2006-06-15T22:04:00.000+09:00

when working with young kids, it's very important that you are making sure that everyone gets a turn. there are few things worse than the look on a child's face when you're finishing up an activity and they still haven't had a turn.
often with many activities during class time, there's enough time to make sure that every child gets a turn. for example, i always make sure that each child gets a chance to count out 10 objects, or to pick a card from the stack and tell me what it is.
but i have a two activities a day where it's impossible for every child to have a turn. when we do weather, i have a little weather board and we put on a sticker that says "today is..." onto the type of weather that we're having that day. and when we sing the ABC song, i have a cute little star pointer that i use to point to the ABCs. since the song repeats, i always pass my pointer on to a child and let them be the teacher for that round of the song.
i've started keeping a little list by my lesson planner. i've got a column for weather and ABCs with a list of all of my students' names under it. as each child gets a turn doing one thing, i cross their name off. i try to plan it so that i cross off each students name in one activity, before i move on to letting them do the other activity.
this ensures that every child gets a turn to do both and i'm not just always calling on the students who are most actively saying that they want to do it. Tags: esl preschool, teaching tips

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surprisingly simple idea

2006-06-12T22:01:00.000+09:00

back before i was teaching the preschool, i was teaching at a kids' eikaiwa, or english conversation school. it was a pretty good gig, but the problem is that i would see each kid once a month for an hour. i'd rotate among 4 schools and the other 3 weeks of the month, the students would have an english speaking japanese instructor. needless to say, the kids were not very good at english. and they often were not very well behaved and i was on my own in the school.
i had this one class that was the class from hell. i think 12 kids ages 3-6. they would come in and just run around the room and climb all over me. never listened to what i was saying. i couldn't get them to do barely anything.
in my training, we were told that if you have a very active class, you should try to play very active games to get their attention. i tried that with this class and failed every time.
imagine my surprise when this happened:
the vocabulary for the month was fruits and the sentence structure was "i like/i don't like..." i took out the main teacher's poster for like/don't like and started teaching the kids "i like apples. i like bananas" immediately they all sat down and started doing this thing with their hand. they would make a circle with their hand during the "i like" part then point to the vocab card when we said the word.
amazing. after all the game prep i had done for this class, it was something as simple as a hand gesture with vocab drilling that actually settled them down.
i'm now teaching some simple sentence structures to my 2 year olds and i always incorporate hand gestures with it.
Tags: esl preschool, esl, teaching vocab

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june's monthly songs

2006-06-07T22:11:00.000+09:00

trying to keep up to date on this. here are the songs that we're doing for the month of june:
*the muffin man--walking around in a circle, then going in and out.
*heads, shoulders, knees and toes
*the freeze--great song that's dance-y and then has parts where the music stops and everyone freezes
*bingo
*you are my sunshine

the you are my sunshine one is pretty funny. i picked it because michi has been acting like it's one of his favorites. but the version that i picked has the second verse to it that goes:
"the other night, dear, while i was sleeping, i dreamt i held you in my arms. when i awoke though i was mistaken, so i hung, my head and cried."
and then of course i put my head down and do a big fake cry.
but turns out that tomo, one of the cutest lil girls who is always happy, is extremely empathetic. when i do this fake crying thing, she busts out into real tears because she can't handle the fact that i'm crying. it's really hard to get around this. especially since i think it's kind of funny.
Tags: esl preschool, kids' songs

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classroom management: what gets their attention?

2006-06-04T20:42:00.000+09:00

there's going to come a time (probably many) in your teaching career where you're faced with a room full of kids who are talking among themselves and have absolutely no desire to pay any attention to you. what do you do?
you need a signal which the kids understand as "you're too noisy and it's time to pay attention to the teacher.". when first trying out a new signal, it's important to have the cooperation of your assistant or other adults in the room, so that the children will begin to learn what the appropriate response to your action is.
however, i've found that it only takes a couple of times for children to learn that <whatever your action is> means quiet time.
here are a few ideas that i've either used or read about:
*sing a part of a song that the kids know which involves being quiet. we used to use a song that had the lyrics "hands in the air. rock-a-bye your bear. bear's now asleep. shh shh shh. bear's now asleep. shh shh shh." (and we'd keep repeating the "bear's now asleep. shh shh shh." getting quieter and quieter until the kids were quiet.
*flip the lights on and off
*count down 5-4-3-2-1 shhhhh.
*do something that involves a call and response. this is my current favorite. i put my hands on my head and say "OH-AY-OH" in a sing-songy voice. kids know that they must copy me. then next time i might say "OO-AY-OO". and repeat as necessary until they become quiet. as they've pretty much gotten quiet, i then try to say something silly that they have to repeat.
Tags: esl preschool, classroom management

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on timing

2006-06-01T21:04:00.000+09:00

timing your lessons just right is an art form. you'd hate to find yourself with 15 minutes left in the lesson and nothing left to do. it's always best to have a few extra things on hand in case your initial ideas flop, but once you get the hang of it, things should come easy.
when you're new, i suggest actually writing down what you're going to do and how long you plan to spend doing it. your lesson plan may look something like this:
*introduction to the class/greetings/short conversation/attendance (10 minutes)
*daily review (e.g. weather, days of the week, ABCs, counting, etc.) (5 min)
*first concept. depending on the level, this could be something as simple as a set of vocabulary or more difficult such as a particular grammar concept. (5 min teaching/10 min game to reinforce/practice the concept)
*second concept. same as above.
*closing--a goodbye song, rewards for good behavior, whatever works for you (3 min)
Tags: esl preschool, esl lesson plan, preschool lesson plan

teaching english to lil cuties--esl tips, tricks, and stories

Leaving here for good...

ESL Resources for Mothers

Teaching Adults?

been moving, trying to get settled in...

more questions...

letting the cat out of the bag...

how cute...

i wish this was my story...

doing a happy dance

i was good today

hi!

sorry all!!

funny punishment

easy "sea" crafts

super simple songs

sometimes they teach me...

july's songs

thanks to whoever came up with this idea

what's cute???

find *your* voice

making sure everyone gets a turn

surprisingly simple idea

june's monthly songs

classroom management: what gets their attention?

on timing

find your voice