A little bit of fun!
Comments(1) When it comes to English Language Learners, there are two fun things we can do to help them with their language acquisition. One of these things is expose them to pop culture in English. The other is to engage them in fun games.
Exposing our ELLs to pop culture in English is a two fold. First it will help our students acquire everyday language that come up in films, songs, TV shows, etc. One of the best ways to pick up common expressions and understand their meanings is by watching cartoons where the language and plot are simple enough to understand and is enjoyable. Secondly, they will be able to relate to other students more frequently. Many students make pop culture references daily. Once our ELLs start to understand these references they will begin to feel like they belong.
Fun games are also a great way to engage our ELLs. In our everyday lives we place a high value on games of all kind. We use games in office retreats, for team building, trust building, in the news paper, the list goes on. So why not have games in our classrooms? Games can help students with writing and spelling (for example scategories), games can help with reading (for example trivia and cross words), games can encourage speaking (such as taboo), games help with listening skills (such as two truths and a lie), the list goes on.
Since these two things are fun and engaging and can really help our ELLS it is important that we try to incorporate them into our lesson plans.
I agree that incorporating fun things into our lessons is essential. Not only will these activities help with language acquisition for English Language Learners, but they will also be fun for the entire class, and therefore minimize the risk of ELL’s feeling singled out. One of my favourite parts of this class has been seeing the activities that everyone has come up with in their group presentations, because many of them can be transferred into our classrooms with little or no tweaking needed. I’ve played Scategories and Taboo before for fun, but never saw the connections they might have to an English class. I don’t think I would have come up with the idea of introducing them in an educational way, which is why I’m really glad we all had to give presentations in this class, because it meant I got to see each chapter from a different point of view. For as much as I’m learning in this program from our professors, I find that I’m learning equally as much from my classmates and their perspectives. This is especially true of LLED 360, and hearing from people who do speak languages in addition to English, because that is not an experience I have. It’s been very eye opening and worthwhile.