Though there are many challenges when teaching young learners, the work is incredibly gratifying. Learning comes so naturally to kids that sometimes it requires little or no effort at all on your behalf. In fact, many teachers agree that all their effort is mainly placed on organizing the kids and keeping them motivated and engaged. This is exactly why choosing the right games, activities and material is crucial.
There are many resources available that provide amazing information about children and what they can do at specific ages. Though this is not an exact science, doing some research on what kids are interested in at certain ages is definitely worth it. So where can you start? The answer is simple, choosing great and relevant topics kids will be interested in. Why, you might ask? Using relevant topics provides purposeful, meaningful, and authentic opportunities for young learners to engage with content.
Let’s take a look at 14 amazing topics you can use with your young learners.
1. Me and My Family
When teaching young children it is essential to start with topics that are closest to them. First, they should always start with themselves. This is a great opportunity for them to learn how to introduce themselves and how to ask others their names. They also practice describing a family. Some teachers take the opportunity to introduce common house pets too, since for many they are in fact part of the family.
2. My House
After their family, the next closest thing to them is their home. Here they practice talking about where they live for instance, house or apartment. As an excellent subtopic here, you might also want to practice the rooms of a house. Depending on their age you might want to add some furniture as yet another subtopic.
3. Colors
Colors in general are very appealing to kids. The more colorful, the better. When practicing descriptions, colors are one of the things kids learn first.
4. Shapes and sizes
Young children are very good at making observations and noticing differences. In addition to colors learning shapes and sizes is great for describing and comparing.
5. Classroom objects
So, since children spend many hours at school and /or other educational institutions, it is very important to cover classroom objects. They can first learn to identify them and then, sort, and classify objects by color, size, and shape. A great way to start integrating knowledge.
6. Numbers
Learning numbers is crucial for young children. Kids at this age are typically learning to count and slightly older kids are starting to add and subtract. Young ESL learners at this age can learn to recognize, write, order, and count objects up to the number 30.
7. Feelings
This is a very important topic to include in ESL lessons for young learners because by learning how to describe feelings they can express and how they feel and understand how others feel in different situations in the classroom. This can help when you need to deal with behavior issues too.
8. Daily Activities
This topic is an amazing way to introduce verbs. Typically with the present progressive or present simple. Use different flashcards that illustrate someone doing an action. It is an easy way to associate events that take place during the day with verbs. It might also come in handy to teach words like morning, afternoon and evening, depending on their age.
9. Days of the week
Children will need to know the days of the week to talk about regular events or activities that take place in their lives. Using a calendar is always useful since it provides a great concrete visual aid for this type of learner.
10. Clothes
Since they start dressing themselves at this age, they are naturally curious to know how to talk about their clothes. Also, having already practiced colors, they can describe what they are wearing.
11. Seasons and Weather
A wonderful topic to practice after learning clothes. They can associate what clothes they wear in each season and type of weather. You can add holidays and festivities to this topic as well, to make it more fun. Keep in mind that if you have a multicultural class, you can ask kids to tell you about festivities they celebrate and how.
12. Food
An all time classic topic for children and adults as well. Also, one that is a lot of fun since after practicing vocabulary related to food they can do fun activities like put together a recipe or even prepare some type of food.
13. Transportation
Children, little boys in particular, are naturally very interested in transportation.
- Cars
- Trucks
- Trains
- Planes
These are an incredibly popular choice where toys are concerned. This topic can be taught before or after the city.
14. My City
Learning to describe what you can find in a city is very important for children and something they can easily relate to since many accompany their parents to different places and shops on a daily basis.
Topic based learning will enable you to keep objectives clear and the lesson organized.
Remember, each topic will include objectives like vocabulary, structures and expressions. By using topics to teach, you are creating a framework to make input more comprehensible and easier to retain.
Tham khảo về các khóa học TESOL tại đây.
