Teaching English in an Islamic Cultural Context

Teaching English in an Islamic Cultural Context

what it means to be an English language teacher in an Islamic culture.

Teaching English in an Islamic Cultural Context

Teaching English in an Islamic culture in the current times poses complex questions for both teachers and learners.

Learners on the other hand experience perplexing perceptions and feelings; they realize the international status of English language and its importance for advancement in studies and having a good future career. At the same time, this lingua franca is, mistakenly, associated with colonialism and political dominance.

I hope to address such issues and identify teaching methods and practices that best suit Muslim learners.

Among the most beloved of deeds to Allah is the one that is continuous, even if it is little.”

“Among the most beloved of people to Allah is the one who is most helpful.”

“Among the most beloved deed to Allah is making a Muslim happy.”

“Among the most beloved of people to Allah are those who have the best attitudes.”

“Make things easy for people, not difficult.”

“Make the most of your life before your death.”

Make the most of “your health before your sickness.”

Make the most of “your time before you become busy.”

Make Among the most of “your wealth before you become poor.”

Make Among the most of “your youth before you become old.”

“To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.”-- Anatole France

“You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.”—Khalil Gibran

50 Inspirational Quotes for Teachers

"Learning is finding out what we already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, and teachers." -- Richard Bach

"Once children learn how to learn, nothing is going to narrow their mind. The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another." -- Marva Collins

"They may forget what you said but they will never forget how you made them feel." - Carol Buchner

"I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles." -- Christopher Reeve

"Your role as a leader is even more important than you might imagine. You have the power to help people become winners." --Ken Blanchard

How to Teach the Verb "To Be" to Beginners

  

The verb “to be” is the first verb students learn in their English studies.

 It is used extensively in the English language and will allow students to create simple sentences with the vocabulary they have learned to date.

 

How To Proceed




 
1.  
   1
    Warm up
    For this first lesson, it is best to focus on only the I, You, He/She/It structures which you can build upon in later classes. If students have not really done a lot of activities with the words he, she, and it, you may want to consider simply using names in the practice activities. Once you have determined what you would like to cover in the first lesson, use the warm up activity to review the vocabulary students will need later on in the lesson. A short simple drill activity would be ideal.
    
2.  
   2
    Introduce Vocabulary
    During the introduction section of your lesson, introduce any new vocabulary you plan to use in this lesson. Some emotions and adjectives would be good because students will then be able to form complete meaningful sentences. Introduce words such as happy and sad if students have not yet learned them. Use flashcards to drill vocabulary and have students complete some simple worksheet activities for further practice.
    
3.  
   3
    Introduce “to be”
    Show students how to make sentences such as “I am happy. You are happy. Jenny is happy.” Ensure that students understand how the subject and forms of the verb are paired. You can practice this before introducing the full sentence structure you would like students to learn. Call on students to make sentences choosing a subject, verb, and adjective from columns on the board. Without introducing the question form “Is she happy?” you can use such questions to test comprehension and students should understand what you are asking. Have them answer by saying “Yes, she is happy.” so that they continue to practice saying the target structure.
    
4.  
   4
    Practice Simple
    You can use worksheets for practice. Have students complete a fill in the blank exercise where they must choose am, is, or are to complete sentences to ensure that they understand which form of the verb agrees with certain subjects. You can also have students match sentences with images or with translations for practice and to test comprehension. As a class check the answers before continuing on.
    
5.  
   5
    Practice Complex
    Students can then complete an activity such as Battleship for further practice. You can adapt this classic game for use in the classroom. While it can be time consuming to explain, especially to beginners, your students will enjoy playing and it can be used to practice a wide variety of topics. To play Battleship students should work in pairs using a worksheet. For this class, the grids on the worksheet might have I, You, He, She, Jenny, Ms. Smith in the first column and happy, fun, from Korea, sad, silly, from America in the first row. Students then practice sentences such as “I am silly.” to try to locate and sink all of their opponents ships first. There may not be enough time in the first lesson to begin this activity but devoting the second lesson entirely to Battleship would give your students lots of speaking practice. For a third class, introduce the question that goes along with this target structure and have students play using the same worksheet but by making questions such as “Is Ms. Smith from America?” The really great thing about this activity is that students essentially have to speak in order to play whereas with board games students may be tempted to simply roll the dice and move their pieces around the board without really practicing English.
    
6.  
   6
    Review
    As a general review activity you can divide students into groups and play Hangman with sentences or words from their textbook. It is perhaps not appropriate to play the original game in your classroom so you can just adapt it so that no one actually hangs. One adaptation is to simply have a very large fish where when students guess incorrectly, a little fish gets closer and closer to being eaten. This is not very accurate as you can either draw the game out or end it whenever you choose. Another method of playing is to assign a point value to certain things. For example, if a group guesses the letter a and there are three in the sentence, the group would get three points. A correct guess of the entire sentence would be five points while there should be a penalty for guessing the entire phrase incorrectly but no penalty for guessing a letter that is not used. You can alter the scoring anyway you would like to make it more appropriate for your class.
    
 


Once your students are quite confident with making the sentences practiced in this lesson, you should include the plural we, you, they as well. As the first verb they study, “to be” is very important for your students and it is essential to get them to understand that the form of the verb is affected by the subject of the sentence.

How To Teach A Perfect Reading Lesson&lt




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  While students certainly need practice reading material in English, it is important that you include short speaking, listening and writing activities whenever possible in your reading lessons. The focus of the lesson may be on reading a particular passage but having a diverse lesson plan will enable students who are good at other aspects of English to still participate and feel confident in their abilities while working to improve an area they are weaker at.

 

How To Proceed With Teaching Reading




 
1.  
   1
    Warm up
   Since students will mostly be sitting at their desks during a reading lesson, use the five to ten minute warm up period to get students moving and speaking. You are also going to want to generate some interest in your reading topic so that the warm up activity flows into your introduction of the material. One way to do this is to have students stand in a circle and ask them to tell you what they know about a certain topic. This can be as simple as giving you some related vocabulary. After a student has given you a word or phrase you can write it on the board and he can call on a student to go next. If appropriate you can bring a ball to class and ask students to gently toss it to the next person. This is good because it actually gives students something to focus on other than the words being written on the board which you will be able to review later.
    
2.  
   2
    Introduce
   Your introduction may have been made quite easy by the warm up activity. Now, while students are seated, ask them to use some of the vocabulary they came up with in sentences and add any key vocabulary to the list. Now you can distribute the reading passage and ask students to read it silently to become acquainted with the new material.
    
3.  
   3
    Practice
   Practice reading the material aloud. You can do this through a series of steps. First have students do some slash reading. You should read the passage aloud pausing where appropriate. Have students repeat each section after you and place slashes in their text. A sample sentence might look like this “For Christmas dinner / I ate ham, / mashed potatoes, / and green beans.//” This will help students read more naturally. Now you can have students read the passage by repeating sentences after you and then call on students to read one sentence at a time. If students struggle with the pronunciation of certain words, take this opportunity to practice pronouncing them too. You may wish to have students read the passage again silently to focus on its meaning before moving on.
    
4.  
   4
    Practice MoreWith reading lessons it is important to ensure that students understand the material as well as any new words. To check vocabulary you can ask students to match synonyms, antonyms or pictures or ask them to complete sentences with the correct vocabulary words. To check overall comprehension, you can start with some true or false questions. Be sure to ask students why a particular statement is true or false when checking the answers. You can also have fill in the blank sentences or basic comprehension questions in this section.
    
5.  
   5
    Produce
   Prepare some discussion questions related to the reading and some that require students to use key phrases in their answers. For beginners, discussions will be quite challenging but intermediate and advanced students will gain a lot from discussing their thoughts and opinions. In smaller classes there will be more opportunities for students to share their viewpoints while with larger classes you may simply have to ask who agrees or disagrees with a particular statement and then call on three or four students to express their opinions.
    
6.  
   6
    Review
   Ask students to summarize the reading or what they learned in class. If you have not already done so, you can also have students search for the topic sentence and discuss why students chose certain sentences whether they chose correctly or not.
    
 


Reading is a key part of learning English and these lessons give you an excellent opportunity to introduce topics of your own. Be careful when selecting an article. It is important that your students are interested in the material. They will be more active in the discussion if they feel strongly about a particular topic.

3 Most Essential Reading Skills Your Students Need




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Reading is so much more than starting with the first word on the page and moving along each line till you get to the end.

 Reading is an essential skill for academic success, and we all know how important it is. We wouldn’t spend the time we do teaching it if we didn’t value reading. Even though reading is so essential, we often overlook the fundamental reading skills that our students need. Reading isn’t just about going from the beginning to the end of a written passage. There are different reading strategies to use for different informational outcomes.

Here are three strategies your students should learn to give them full academic success.
 

Three Quintessential Reading Strategies

 
 
1.  
   1
    Scanning
    Scanning is used when looking for a specific piece of information in a given text. When a student scans, he looks over the selection quickly to locate the particular piece of information he needs and reads only that information, but carefully. Once he finds this information, he stops reading. The reading passage could be a selection on a test with reading comprehension questions, but it may also simply be reading a schedule to see when a particular movie is playing or checking a weather map in a newspaper. Scanning is a fast form of reading that does not pay attention to every detail given in the text. Before students can scan for the answer to their questions, they should think about what form the answers will take. Will they be a time? Will they be a location? Knowing this beforehand will assist students in locating the information quickly.
    
2.  
   2
    Skimming
    Skimming, like scanning, is a quick type of reading. Unlike scanning, though, the goal of skimming is to learn the main points in a larger selection of writing rather than answer one specific question. When you skim milk, you take the richest part off the top. Likewise, when your students skim a reading passage, they should be pulling all the most essential information out of a piece. The most straightforward way to skim a given passage is to read the entire first paragraph, the entire last paragraph and read the first sentence of each additional paragraph in between. In so doing, your students should be able to identify the major themes throughout the passage. Students should also pay attention to italicized or bold words, headings and subheadings. After skimming a passage, students can then decide whether to go back and read the entire selection or to scan for particular information. Skimming can be a difficult activity for ESL students as they often get bogged down by new vocabulary and confusing grammar. Reassure your students that when they skim a passage, they only need to get the author’s primary points. Encourage them to guess at any new vocabulary they come across and not to worry about the details.
    
3.  
   3
    Reading for Detail
    Careful reading or reading for detail is probably the most commonly used reading strategy. This is a slower reading process that starts at the beginning of a passage and proceeds to the end. When reading for detail, students should read every sentence, but they should not try to know the exact meaning of each word. Even native speakers infer the meaning of unknown words as they read. Reassure your students that even when reading for information, they do not need to know every word on the page but should try and guess its meaning from the context, a valuable skill in and of itself. If students put too much pressure on themselves when it comes to new vocabulary, the dictionary may become more of a burden than a blessing. When reading for detail, students should aim to understand about eighty percent of the information they read. If they need an answer to a particular question that they may have missed, they can always go back and scan for it.
    
 
 Reading may sometimes seem as easy as a, b, c, but in fact there are strategic ways to make your students’ reading more useful and productive. By teaching skimming and scanning in addition to reading for detail, you will give your students the strategies they need to be successful learners.

Keeping a Journal

 
 Keeping a journal of your own thoughts, action research projects and general teaching observations and progress can be enormously beneficial, but it’s important to think about how you structure this and what to include. 

Keeping a Journal

 
 Keeping a journal of your own thoughts, action research projects and general teaching observations and progress can be enormously beneficial, but it’s important to think about how you structure this and what to include.

Why keep a journal?

 • Keeping a journal can form an important part of your autonomous development and allow you to reflect on your teaching practice and help you to analyse and draw conclusions from some of the data you will be collecting.

 • The process of having to write down your thoughts and reflections in an organised way should help to focus your mind on the lesson your teaching and what happened within the classroom.

 • The journal can form an important record of your thoughts and developments over short and longer periods of time.

 • If you are writing journal entries shortly after teaching, reviewing these a day or two later can be very informative as your perceptions and evaluation of what happened within the class can change quite a lot.

 • If you review a number of entries over longer periods of weeks or even months, this may well help you to see common trends in your teaching and help you to isolate areas where problems regularly occur, where you need to do more work or where you have developed real strengths and overcome some obstacles. This can help you to set new goals for future research projects and developments and see real progress in your development. 

How to structure the journal and what to include?

 There are a number of ways you can structure your journal entries. When you first start keeping a journal you will need to experiment with a few different methods to find the ways that best suit you and the research that you are doing.

 Here are some different methods, which you can try:

 • Set a small number of specific questions to yourself that you will answer after each lesson.

 • Write a descriptive entry stating what happened in the lesson

 • Pick just one aspect of the lesson that made an impression on you and write about it.

 • Choose a specific heading, for example ‘What I learned from teaching this lesson’ Or ‘How I would teach this lesson better next time’ and write only about that.

 • You can write your journal entries in the form of comments on your actual lesson plan and keep them in your journal. This will help you to understand what the comments refer to and can help you remember what changes you want to make to the lesson if you teach it again.

 • If you are undertaking a longer structured cycle of action research you might want to define specific things that you want to learn from each lesson. If this is the case write your aims for the lesson in your journal before you teach it for example, ‘By the end of this lesson I want to know …’ and then respond to yourself in the journal entry. 

How much to write

 Be careful that you don’t set yourself unrealistic goals and overload yourself with work. Writing in a journal can take time. To be useful you’ll also need time to systematically review and reread your journal entries and the more you have written the longer this will take.

 If you are writing detailed entries in your journal, it is wiser to only write about one specific group / class of students or information relative to the specific aim of your current action research project, rather than trying to keep a detailed record of every lesson you teach.  

The tone of you journal

 Think about the tone of your journal.

 • You could write as though you are writing to a fellow teacher. This will ensure that your explanations are clear to someone who may not have been present in the class and so help you to understand the entries when you review your journal weeks, months or even years later.

 • You could write just bullet point notes to yourself. This saves time, but you need to be sure you will understand them when you come back to review your entries.

 • You could write entries as a third person observer of your class. This may help you to be objective about the class. 

Instructions

1. •   1 
      
     

     Do not shy away from patterns and prints. Sometimes, it is easy to wear neutral colors, since Muslim women wear many layers of clothing. However, plain colors are bland, especially in the spring. One solution from fashion website We Love Hijab is to wear a long classic A-line striped skirt with a silky shirt and floral blazer. Along skirt and classic blazer are long and concealing, thus appropriate for the modest Muslim girl's lifestyle. Do not go overboard with prints; wear a black scarf for a comforting finish. Mixing prints is a fashionable spring statement, as long as the outfit sticks to three carnal rules: 1) Keep one of the prints neutral in color. 2) Keep one of the prints simple. 3) Keep the shapes classic.

      
      
   •   2 
      
     

     Dress in layers. It is often hard for Muslim women to find the latest trends of clothing as in modest silhouettes. Sometimes the skirts and shirt sleeves are too short; this problem can easily be solved by dressing in layers. A shin-length skirt can be worn over knee-high boots or black pants. A short-sleeve shirt can be worn over a matching long-sleeve shirt. The layers can be easy on the wallet as well; solid-color long-sleeve shirts can be paired with several outfits.
     
     

SESI PENGANUGERAHAN IJAZAH MAJLIS KONVOKESYEN KE-24, TAHUN 2011 UUM CONFERMENT OF DEGREE SESSIONS 2 OKTOBER 2011 / 2 OCTOBER 2011(AHAD / SUNDAY) PETANG (SESI 4)/ AFTERNOON (SESSION 4)*Time: 1.45P.M-6.00P.M UUM CAS Sarjana Pendidikan /Master of Education 1 800406 Abu Talib Musa 2 801328 Adrilayanti Alauddin 9 800420 Amilee Ong Shiau Ling 12 801769 Anita bt. Othman 15 800433 Asmah Hanim Che Ani 20 804046 Carlos Fernando Campusano Lobos 25 802810 Dayang Maheran binti Ahmad 30 802816 Farhana Muhamad Nor 77 800546 Mohd Safirol Md Yusof 80 800552 Mohd. Nurul Akmal Mat Ariff 96 88229 Nor Azlina Mat Ariff  97 88230 Nor Azliza Mat Ariff 100 800597 Noraini Muhammad 114 802903 Rohaida binti Omar 120 801382 Saratha a/p K.Krishnan  121 800651 Shahazatul Maslina Suaid 122 803215 Shangkari a/p Dilliappan 123 802907 Sharifah Farizah Syed Seth 134 805314 Srikandi @ Saemah bt. Samaon 145 803216 Wasuge a/p Krishnasamy 148 803356 Yang Salehah Abdullah Sani 151 804906 Yuan Tian 152 800696 Zakaria Zainol UUM Academic Affairs Department Official Website :: Master of Education tags: UUM Master convo GRADUATES’ TRACER STUDY SYSTEM FORM The Graduates’ Tracer Study System form, Ministry of Higher Education  can be obtained through: http://graduat.mohe.gov.my Please fill in the analysis form as follows: 1.       Click “LOGIN “ at the Graduates’ Guide Menu  2.       Enter Identity Card Number 3.       Choose your institution > IPTA < > UUM < 4.       Enter the code as shown by the image( words and numbers) shown. 5.       Click “Continue”. 6.       Answer all the questions as directed 7.       Sign off “keep and continue” (at the end of the last question). 8.       Continue as directed. 9.       Print the slip after completing all the questions. 10.    Keep the slip as PROOF, when asked for, on the convocation robe collection date. Problems, regarding the completion of The Graduates’ Tracer Study System form,  Ministry of Higher Education, should be directed to En. Muhammad Hafiz Mohd Ghazali, an official of UTLC at 04-9284055. The Graduates’ Tracer Study System form must be completed before any prospective graduate is allowed to collect his or her robe.

           

Contact & Information

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Any questions please contact the following: For PostgraduateMdm. Azian Nafiah Principle Assistant Director Graduate Study Unit Academic Affairs Department Universiti Utara Malaysia 06010 Sintok Kedah Darul Aman. Tel: 604-928 3157/3105/4366 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">  <!--  document.write( '</' );  document.write( 'span>' );  //-->  </script>

           

Live Streaming / Siaran Langsung (Broadband)

Live Streaming / Siaran Langsung Majlis Konvokesyen Ke-24 2011 The 23rd Convocation Ceremony 2011 Masa Siaran / Broadcasting Time: 1 Oktober 2011 / 1 October 2011 : 8.30 am - 6.00 pm (Sabtu / Saturday) 2 Oktober 2011 / 2 October 2011 : 8.30 am - 6.00 pm (Ahad / Sunday) 3 Oktober 2011 / 3 October 2011 : 8.30 am - 6.00 pm (Isnin / Monday) 4 Oktober 2011 / 4 October 2011 : 8.30 am - 6.00 pm (Selasa / Tuesday) 5 Oktober 2011 / 5 October 2011 : 8.30 am - 6.00 pm (Rabu / Wednesday) 6 Oktober 2011 / 6 October 2011 : 8.30 am - 6.00 pm (Khamis / Thursday)

ETHICAL CONVOCATION DRESSING
 GraduatesIt is compulsory for graduates to don the proper convocation dress prepared by the university according to the conventions set forth:
 
 
1. The cape has to placed squarely on both shoulders
2. The tassel is to hang on the left side of the hat.

GENTLEWOMAN

Dressing
 
 
1. Light coloured Dress(Baju Kurung); or
2. Long dress; or
3. Loose blouse; and
4. The dress should cover the neck in the back and front
5. Any other clothing must cover the leg until the ankles and should not have splits on the right, left, front or back; or
6. The skirt must exceed the ankles and be presentable.
7. The dress must be long and light coloured

1. (no designs and no strips)
2. Dark coloured coat/blazer; and
3. The trousers should exceed the ankle and should be loose
4. Dark coloured shoes covering well the legs in the front and back
5. The heels should not exceed 1.5 inches.
6. The hair should look neat;
7. For those with long hair, the hair  must be  neatly tied; and those
8. With head gear (tudung), the shawls should preferably be light coloured and well suited with the academic dress.

REMINDERGraduates will be PROHIBITED /STOPPED by the marshal from witnessing the investiture of the scrolls if their dress does not conform to the dress code.

Most adults do not realize that children are constantly making decisions about themselves, about their world, and based on those decisions, about what to do to survive or to thrive. (The four categories of decisions are covered in Chapter Five)

Positive time out is based on the understanding that children "do" better when they "feel" better.

On the other hand, positive time out can help children learn many important life skills, such as the importance of taking time to calm down until they can think more clearly and act more thoughtfully.

When human beings are upset, they function from their reptilian brain (the brain stem) where the only options are fight or flight. I joke with people by saying, "When children push your buttons, you react from your reptilian brain, and reptiles eat their young."

First of all, refuse to take the disrespect personally.

Keep in mind that the child does not really know you as a person and is responding as a child would—childishly

Next, work to minimize the disruption in your classroom. Depending on the degree of disrespect—from rolling eyes and heavy sighs to loud remarks, you can choose to keep everyone else as on task as possible. Deal with the misbehaving student personally and in private whenever you can. When you do speak with the student, resist the urge to engage in a verbal battle.

Instead, take a problem-solving approach. Work to solve the original problem and usually the student will volunteer an apology. Even if the child does not apologize, when the behavior improves, be glad. You won. Even better, the child is on the right path.

A craving for an easy life seems the undercurrent- any activity designed for a learning task is taken as ‘boring’. This translates into noise making, disrespect for class orders and teachers. what other means does the teacher have hold the class in control for the benefit of the serious students?

In order to reach students, we need to reach them where they are

While you should not pander to their whims, it is important to help them see the importance of learning. I work with my students to set short and long range goals (some of my students can be as unruly as yours, I believe, and for the same reasons). I make sure they know WHY they have to do the work—how they will benefit.

As for the students who care—try to focus on them more than you focus on the misbehaving students. Sooner or later, you can turn it around. Try every single trick you can to motivate and then keep on trying some more. Your students need you.

What do you do with a child who continually has outbursts in the class that interrupts lessons?

First, you need to find out why the child is making these outbursts

Even though it is almost impossible, try to ignore as much as you can.

There are many different reasons as to why children misbehave and it is important that as educators we understand these reasons and know how to prevent them.    Sheila Milnes once stated, “If you learn why your children misbehave, it will give you new ways to try to prevent problem behaviors” (Milnes, 2004).

Children misbehave for various reasons.  Due to many behavioral disorders, because of their lack of attention or love at home, boredom, confusion about their school work, lack of confidence, bad home life, low self esteem, need for independence, lack of social skills, lack of guidance and psychological problems or disorders.

“Children need to feel that they belong to you, to
 the family, to the class at school, to a group of friends. They may misbehave to gain
 membership or to find out if they will still be accepted. Thus, it is important to let
 children know you love them and that they are still part of the family, even when they
 behave badly.”  (Richardson,     Oklahoma State University) 

The top two reasons why children misbehave is due to their boredom and lack of attention.

This is not an easy task.  Educators are often too busy, have no patience or interest in why the children are misbehaving. They often just want the behavior to stop and punish without further investigation. This leads to further misbehavior in the future. If we, as educators, take the time to investigate the cause of children’s misbehavior, we will save ourselves a lot of time and frustration in the future and genuinely help these children succeed.

This seems to be the one thing that teachers worry about the most regarding the classroom. Any teacher can teach children the information they need to learn, but it takes a good teacher to be able to control their class and deal with misbehaving students.

Nurturing students who misbehave is an interesting point. I think they need to feel that the teacher is not going to give up on them just because they misbehave.

Also, we as teachers need to be aware of our teaching demeanor. We need to prepare captivating lessons, which will entice our students with a desire to learn.

I believe being aware of these hierarchy of needs is essential for teachers. The five different steps that must be completed before the next needs are taken care of are physiological needs, safety needs, belongingness and love needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization needs.

Even Some Veteran Teachers Haven’t Considered Teaching Procedures In This Depth…

wonder what their secret is.  The secret lies in the first few days and weeks of school.  The first few days of school are SO crucial.  If a teacher allows and ignores whispering in the hallway now, then students will be yelling in the hallway by Christmas.  You must “nip it in the bud” my college professor once told me.  If students don’t do EXACTLY what you want the first few days of school, you must make them practice it over and over again until you get EXACTLY the behaviors you desire.

In our conversation I said “Remember every behavior that got on your nerves last year,”.

 

introduce myself

learn my students' names

I ask my students to take out the books and materials they are to use during   the whole term. I introduce the books one by one by holding them up and presenting   their titles. For instance, for a workbook I would say: " Look, this is   your workbook," and have them repeat the word "workbook" after   hearing it a couple of times. This activity goes on until all the books are   introduced and can be recognized by all the students. So, when I say, "Take   out your textbook," they know which book they will be working on.

write their names and last names on their belongings, particularly   their books and notebooks

tell them how we do the roll call and that each student should say "present"   once s/he hears his/ her name. I ask the students to say "absent"   when a student I call is not present.

introduce and/or review some classroom objects and classroom language

 

book, pen, ruler,   board, notebook, eraser, pencil case, door, pencil, sharpener, desk, window,   chalk, marker

Some other useful terms are:

     

teacher, quiz, student,   report card, homework

  Classroom language may include some of the following:

                                   

Listen.	Answer.
Repeat.	Write.
Come to the board.	Read.
Go to your seat.	May I go out?
Be quiet.	May I come in?
Stand up, please.	Please sit down.

It Works in Practice: A Puppet, a Ball or a Bottle?

What did you talk to your son about when he was   six years old?"

At this age, pupils are supposed to be able to function in useful, daily situations,   responding to questions such as:

 

 
- What's your name?
  - How old are you?
  - How many people are in your family?
  - How old is your sister? What's her name?
  - What's your favourite colour?
  - Have you got a pet? name? colour? favourite food?
  - Are you hungry? What would you like to eat? etc.

children learn best through playing   games

how do we teach them?

Games hold children's interest and motivate them to speak. Here are three   ways of challenging young learners to start talking about themselve:

 
a. a puppet – Use a puppet to ask children simple questions.   Children's imaginations help them to communicate with puppets easily.
  b. a ball – Ask a question, throw a ball to a child, and he   or she catches it, he or she answers the question.
  c. a bottle – Ask a question, spin a bottle, and when it stops,   it points to a child who answers the question.

teaching young learners is repetition.

The   aim of this activity is to teach the children how to speak about themselves.   It is a drawing dictation.

Some children may have   already started using didn't in negative utterances without knowing   that did is an auxiliary that carries tense and that therefore, the   main verb has to take the infinitive form.

The main purpose of our job is to educate children.