ESL Articles

Here, mabo dofu is servered domburi style or served over rice. The small bowl contains a bean sprout and wakame salad. A slice of apple rounds out this japanese school lunch. Source wiki commons

The Japanese school lunch program may be one of the benefits offered to you, if you teach at a public elementary school. If it is offered, I’d recommend taking advantage because it’s not very expensive, and you’ll gain the respect of your fellow teachers. It’s currently 2012, and one month of school lunches costs 4200yen and in an average month, that buys 20 meals or 210yen per [...]

Kids sure can be cute! Of course I might be biased. This is my daughter dressed up in a kimono for shichigosan.

I’ve been teaching at the same elementary school now for nearly seven years and if there’s one thing you learn working with children, is that they say the cutest things without ever realizing it. I’d like to share a couple of cute things I’ve heard over the years.
Our school has all kinds of demonstration classes. Teachers watch us; parents watch us; government people watch us, and the teachers at our school watch each other. On one of those days, [...]

I’ve been at the school where I teach, for going on seven years now and despite any language barriers, you can’t help but get attached to the kids. I learned today that one of my students, after a two year battle with leukemia, has died. Despite knowing that she’s gone on to a better place and that all the suffering has ended, it still hurts.
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Looking at the daily life of a teacher, teaching English to children in Japan

Teaching ESL to Children or perhaps a more applicable title could be a day in the Life of an Elementary School ALT in Japan.  In a sense, this is an attempt to answer the question, what’s the daily life like, for English teachers in Japan,  in the Japanese school system? And of course that’s for people thinking about coming to Japan to teach English. Would I recommend it? If you like the unusual, YES! Some of the things we’ll be dealing with, is what the daily routine [...]

I’ll be the first to admit, no man is an island unto himself and as much as I’d like to say that Kids-ESL.com is the best website on the net for children’s ESL, the reality is, there are a lot of great folks putting up excellent websites. Besides, diversity is great for the market place and overall makes everyone strive for improvement. So with that in mind, I thought I’d list some of the places that I think are great on the net for teaching English to kids.
 
This site, ESL-Kids.com, has flashcards, games and more. Their flashcards sections feature some [...]

Three Little Pigs Activities Intro:
If you’ve read my adaptation for the story of the Three Little Pigs,  you might be looking for some suggestions on what to do after the story’s over. Here are some suggestions.
 
Classroom Games
Since the Three Little Pigs makes use of gestures (TPR style), there are a number of suitable games that use gestures that can be played. In considering the game though, you must keep in mind the age of the students.  For example, the Charades Race Game (Whisper Game using gestures) might be Ok, for fifth graders but would be too difficult for first graders. [...]

Here’s a small set of ESL shopping activities that are appropriate for elementary school students from first grade all the way up to sixth. While you might find them suitable for older or younger students, I only go with what I know . First things first, this page focuses on the actual activities themselves, so [...]

The Three Little Pigs can be adapted for the elementary school ESL class.

Introduction
Here’s a version of the Three Little Pigs. This one has been changed a bit and the reason for the change is that it’s been adapted for the ESL classroom. The biggest change is that classroom English has been used in the dialog between the pigs and the different people they meet. This gives the teacher an advantage in the fact that they can get the class involved in telling the story even during the first reading. In other places, the language has been simplified. Our version of [...]

Teach English to kids long enough, and eventually, you’ll run out of things to do. I mean, there are just a handful of sites on the net that give out great content and teaching materials, but surely you’ll go through all of it sooner or later. Or maybe you’re in a different boat. Perhaps you need something a little more custom tailored to your specific needs.
A couple of old standbys in the ESL arena, are crossword puzzles and word search puzzles. Marry that with the thoughts above and your looking at trying to create your own word search for kids. [...]

Tongue Twisters are a kind of universal game. Like the game of tag, every culture has their own version of this popular word game. In Japan, tongue twisters are known as hayakutchi kotoba, literally fast mouth words. For children learning English as a second language, I see tongue twisters as being like a baseball batter swinging several bats before stepping up to the home plate. By swinging several bats, one regular bat will feel super light when it comes time to actually hit the ball. It’s over practice. The same goes with these word games. Over practice leads to improvements [...]

A while back, I contacted another blogger, one Mr. Dekoven, aka Major Fun, who runs the site, Deep Fun. After some emails back and forth, Bernie sent me this video featuring Ken Robinson, whom I think is awesome on his ideas for education. It’s not just the fact that Ken is in the video but [...]

On the Kids ESL Lesson Plan’s page, I’m starting to amass a database of thematic lesson plans. These plans provide enough materials for 45 minute period, which is the typical length for one period in a Japanese elementary school. What I’ve realized is that while the games all have in-depth explanations, the other items in [...]

Muzzy in Gondoland was released in 1986 to help children learn English. Even though it’s more than a couple of decades old, it’s still very enjoyable for children of all ages. ——————————————————— ———————————————————

This bowl and cup were gifts from the students at the Tokubetsushiengakko, where I teach.

A couple of times every year, I get called to teach at a high school for children with developmental disabilities, in Japanese, a Tokubetsushiengakko. It’s a lot of fun and about the only complaint I have is that they don’t call me more often but at any rate, if you have an opportunity, I’d say go for it because it really is a lot of fun. So what I want to do in this article is present some activities that I’ve done in the past that [...]

From Yahoo Answers…
I am from Turkiye, and I am an English teacher, teaching the age of 10-13. I have a problem. Although they are 13, they don’t know the basic grammar rules and they cant speak even a word but i am expected to teach them “present perfect” and ask some conversation about different conversations; i ask the question and translate into turkish as they don’t understand anything. what do you suggest for that situation?
To give a kind of cop-out answer, there is no, one, single best way to teach English to kids. Prevailing wisdom [...]

ESL 4 kids, in Japan, is extremely rewarding, but if you come from a serious, academic background, you might find it frustrating at first. The problem you see, stems from the fact that even in elementary schools, language learning isn’t seen as a serious subject. In fact, you might even find, that the class you were hired to teach, isn’t even called English Class. At my school for example, English class is called, Gaikokugo katsudo or Foreign Language Activities. And reading the book published by the Japanese Ministry of Education (MEXT), you’ll find out that the goal of language classes [...]

English Grammar for Children takes a look at effective strategies for teaching grammar in the ESL classroom without putting your kids to sleep or having riots breakout. Topics covered include modeling, humor, and how to stay away from using translation as a crutch when communicating with your students.

English grammar for kids is a little different in the ESL classroom. In addition to the children not understanding English, you also have to contend with the fact that English grammar can be, uh, BORING! Here are some organic ways to teach English grammar without putting your kids to sleep. Oh and this is part II of this article.