My maternal nature mixed probably with my obsession with having kids before I hit the big 3-0, has lead me to teaching English to
preschoolers in Italy. It's just something I do privately in my spare
time at the moment while I study but hopefully as of January I will be
contracted for an hour a week in a local nursery.
My
first foray into the world of preschool teaching was Lucia - my first
Italian student. She was only 4 years old when I started teaching her
but she was a long way from starting school yet since they don't usually
start until they're 6 in Italy. This meant I had at least two years of
lessons to fill where she would not be able to either read or write. If
you try looking for TEFL lesson plans, courses, books or other materials
on line for nursery pupils you'll quickly find yourself in front of a
brick wall called 'WRITING AND READING'. Now I don't know about you but I
would presume that if an exercise is supposedly 'suitable for preschool
learners' that it wouldn't include anything that a preschooler couldn't
do.
Add to this lack of usable material the fact that
you've only got one pupil - there's a limit to the number of
entertaining games you can do with just one child - and you've got a bit
of a problem.
So I started researching. I searched
through hundreds of websites and book reviews and in the end I bought
lifetime membership to langacademy.net so that I could download the
books and scan through them myself. And then I started patch working the
pieces together to make some kind of course. The most useful book I've
found so far is Kid's Box 1 (Cambridge publications). Lucia could handle
most of the exercises up to unit 8. After that there are a lot more
writing exercises. Then we also used some songs from the BBC Learning
English website. We've played Memory, Simon Says, Where is, Boardgames
and The Magic Box so many times that I've lost count. But she hasn't got
bored yet.
Lucia now knows all the colours, the number
up to 20, toys, school objects, commands, prepositions of place, family
members, many adjectives, clothes, animals, food and drink and parts of
the body. She still can't read or write anything in English but I'm
hoping to start teaching her after the Christmas. She's half way through
Primary one now after all.
But she can hear
differences between English and Italian sounds that even some of my more
advanced students have difficulty with. She told me the other day that
she accidentally said 'blue' instead of 'blu' to her friend in class the
other day. It's a very subtle difference but she notices it. She can
also pronounce the 'th' sound in 'teeth' and 'mouth'.
What I'm trying to say is what started out as a problem has ended up giving me a huge amount of satisfaction...
So I've decided to pass some of my acquired knowledge on. I'll be posting some activities that I do with my one-on-one students and if I get the nursery contract I'll let you know of any fun games I come up with for them.
It's never too early to learn a foreign language - you just need to have the right materials.
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