A Reading Activity For Young Learners

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• YLs
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• Children's stories
• Storytelling
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1. Read one of the stories below. Choose a favorite to read at home. Read again with your parents. Prepare to tell the story to the rest of the group.

2. Follow up.

Go to your school's library. Choose a book. Make a video of your telling your story to share what you read with the others in the group.

Teach Cultural Differences to Young Learners

One of the many tasks that an EFL teacher has to face is to promote opportunities for teaching cultural aspects and how important it is to avoid generalizing. We teachers have to deal with a very tight schedule, and many times we fail to add a cultural touch to our lessons. Last week I attended a minicourse at Casa Thomas Jefferson called Cultural Capsules in the Lesson Content by Kátia Falcomer and Marcília Taveira. The presenters quoted Don Snow and how he recommends categorizing cultural aspects we teachers are supposed to know and teach. The aformentioned author claims that belonging to a culture means having shared knowledge of important dates, songs, writers, but it also means having shared views and shared patterns of behaviors. The participants were assigned the task of coming up with a lesson for one of the books we teach at the Casa. My group got Fantastic 2. I have to confess that it was hard to plan with people I'm not very close to, but I was pleased by the results. I'm sharing here the video we used and the powerpoint presentation we had. We brought food from different places, and that boosted the energy in the group. Here are the materials in case you work with this age group ( 9 year old Elementary students) and have a foody lesson coming along.

Breakfast around the World

Target vocabulary Food for breakfast-
Level Elementary
Aim Understand what people eat in three foreigner countries.
Write about food preferences for breakfast
Promote intercultural awareness
Web2.0 Mixbook
Materials Powerpoint, DVD player or computer and internet connection
Preparation Bring some examples of food people eat in different countries

Cultural Differences Food Items Creative Commons

More PowerPoint presentations from Daniela

My Family Book

I wanted to read to my EFL students a colorful book to grab their attention. I also wanted them to write about their own families by following the language pattern in the book. I can't draw to save my life, but I know the telephone of a dear friend who can VERY WELL. Thank you, Cleide. The illustrations are soooo cute. I hope many children get the chance to learn how to become better readers by using our book!

Open publication - Free publishing - More shared reading

Students Producing Content

I am teaching a group of hectic16 EFL elementary students this semester. Today I decided to try doodling songs, a project I' ve heard about on classroom2.0.

I had never seen this group of students work so eagerly. A simple idea that can make a big difference.

In class

• Show a doodling video.
• Prepare a powerpoint presentation with sencences from the lyrics on slides.
• Have your students illustrate them.
• Make a short video and bring it to class.

Personalizing Vocabulary Games - Food Items

Describe it
One of my favorite games for the amount of speaking it promotes.
Elementary students must be encouraged to speak, they still don't believe they can actually communicate.
We played the game below. As follow up students wrote and illustrated more pages for the game. I'll send their work to their families to enjoy it together.
ESL Food Items Guessing Game

Describing Food 2 on Prezi

EFL shared reading

I wonder why EFL institutions do not use shared reading techniques as it is used in an ESL environment.

Maybe the answer to this question revolves around the idea that most EFL schools teach reading and writing in the target language only when the children can read and write in their mother tongue, not to mention how hard it is to find a book that matches the learning points we have to address in our thight schedule constrains. We work with course books instead, we teachers have to do our best to contextualize pieces of vocabulary and keep students engaged.
We all agree that learning to read is a critical step in a child's education. But teaching children to read is controversial. I don't think EFL schools should do it,but we could reinforce many reading strategies that shared reading techniques facilitate.

I have had the pleasure of working for Patricia Machado of the Sequoia Foundation who was recently nominated the business woman of the year.

The Sequoia Foundation brings shared reading into practice. This amazing foundation uses great quality books and works on sharpening public school teachers' teaching skills. They help by making reading a possibility to underpriviledged communities in Brazil. Kids who many times didn't have a single book to read at home and no reading habits of any kind in their families.

I could see for myself the advantages of share reading with students - their enthusiasm and excitment. This is used to... This verb tense bothers me... No longer... I have moved. But have seen how it works and being a mother of three, one thing I know... Kids love books! I have to read them to my students and use some of the strategies I have learned just because I believe them.

What is shared reading?

It is exactly what it sounds like. Students and teacher sit comfortably sharing the reading responsability.

Why share read?

You can teach concepts of print or phonemic awareness, you can also promote opportunity for boosting oral langage during a "book talk". Teachers can work on reading fluency and vocabulary acquisition in context. Students are more engaged. Children love stories!

An EFL shared reading web2.0 project

I have been writing my own e-books to share read. I started a wiki offering resources and inviting illustrators and EFL teachers to join me.

Paper books are much better, but I don't have them at hand and there are web2.0 that make writing a graded book a real possibility for me. I am aware that there are sites that do exactly this, but you have to pay for the books.... God knows I wish I could!

Here is a sample book and a video of some students reading one of the books I wrote. Enjoy!

You can enlarge and download the book on the site...

A Mother's Day Web2.0 Project

Mother's day is around the corner, this is an esl graded book to read with our esl/efl students to help them get in the mood to celebrate. What's the best gift for mom?
In Class:

• I'll elicit from them what makes a good gift for their moms.


• Write a wordcloud with their suggestions.


• I'll read them the book and check against the cloud (check how many of their guesses were mentioned in the book).


• Ask them to personalize by designing a gift for their moms.

Here is how it looks like on issuu:







Here is how it looks like on Storyjumper

Here is how it looks on Colgate Smile E-cards

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Here is how it looks on rockyou

Please feel free to use the illustrations and try web2.o out! You can find them on flickr.

Easter project

A dear friend of mine - Cleide Frazão- made a great video teaching us how to draw a rabbit. She uses a simple language pattern to convey instructions. Even begginers can profit from her instructions without being overwhelmed by language distractions.

In class:
Show the children this video.
Have them cut out to make an easter card.
E-writing might take place -
Scan the rabbits and have children edit them using flickr photo lab. Children will send home a personalized Easter card to enjoy with their families and friends.
Happy Easter!

Parts of the body - storybird

I love teaching young learners. Children engage and thrive when we bring interesting activities and books.
I spent years wishing I could bring my esl young learners instructional reading books to help me contextualize my lessons.
I was more than happy when I found storybird on Orze Karaoglu's blog. With this amazing tool I can finally write books to be used in shared reading sessions that match my busy schedule. Thank you for sharing!
This one could be used for parts of the body/face.


Monster Talk on Storybird

About animals (vuvox) Integrating skills