How to Teach English With Ludic Activities

• Ludic, or spontaneous, activities are effective tools when teaching English.

• These activities encourage students to practice their language skills on the spot.

LUDIC

Play

Imagination

Humor

Fun

Games

Players

Benefits of ludic activities

Ludic activities are highly motivating Create an enjoyable and relaxed learning environment

Encourages active learning and collaboration

Task-orientated games engage students and give them a meaningful context for language use.

They focus their attention on the task itself rather than the production of correct speech, and the competitive nature keeps students interested and concentrated as most learners will try hard to win.

They are student-centered and can integrate all linguistic skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening.

1• When reading a dialogue from a story or play, project

it onto the board, erasing some words or phrases.

2• Have students work in teams to write the missing

words.

3• Encourage students to think of the funniest or most

interesting captions to complete the gaps.

Simple Example

This activity promotes reading and creative writing while at the same time practices speaking and listening

Categories

• Free Reading

• News paper and maganize

• Write now!

• Run and write

• Write a dairy

• Describe a picture

• The hot seat

• Spin the coin

• Role play

• Speeches

• Telephone

• Listen to a song

• Listen a story

• Running dictation

Listening Speaking

ReadingWriting

Ludic Reading

• The ludic reader reads for pleasure. According to Victor Nell in his paper “The Psychology of

Reading for Pleasure: Needs and Gratifications”

Create Ludic Readers

1. Let students see you read.

2. Read the right books.

3. Invite a local author to class.

4. Teach students reading strategies

5. Set up a book club.

6. Let students choose their own books.

7. Use technology to create an e-book.

8. Introduce students to a book series.

9. Allow students to dislike books.

10. Helps students see the importance of reading.

Encourage learning and writing in low elementary

Low elementary (example)

What to do:

1-Ask your child to dictate a story to you. It could include descriptions of your outings and activities, along with mementos such as fall leaves and flowers, birthday cards, and photographs.

2-Keep supplies of paper, pencils, markers, and the like within easy reach.

3-Ask questions that will help children organize the stories.

4-Students can create a story in spanish and tell it in from of their classmates.

5-Teacher will write the story in the class journal and tell it to the class but now in English.

Objective:

-Encourage beginning and developing writers to keep journals and write stories.

-Motivate students to use their creativity and create stories

WHY DO MY STUDENTS ARE NOT MOTIVATED?

• Feel rejected.

Lack knowledge

and experience.

Are upset and feel insecure.

Are discouraged.

Lack confidence

HOW CAN I KEEP MY STUDENTS FROM GETTING BORED IN CLASS?

A recent study suggests that 2 out of 3children are bored in at least one classevery day, and

17 % say they suffer daily boredom inevery class.

The top two reasons they cite for theirboredom are they do not find thematerial they are studying interestingor they feel it is not relevant to theirlives.

What can be done tofight boredom in class?

• Have a “Surprise Box” in which you put a variety of art

materials

• Let them add things from nature, the yard or any other fascinating place to the box.

• Allow your children the freedom to create whatever they like—make sure to be delightfully surprised when you see what they have done.

Backyard Adventure

• Every backyard is an adventure waiting to happen.Children see things we never notice—a stick can

become a million things. Going out with binoculars to count how many birds are there or searching for ants

and other creepy crawlers is just like a trip to the jungle.

Let them learn to solve their boredom problem by voicing confidence in their ability to find something fun to do

” I bet you can find something interesting to do.” (This does not mean you just say, “ Just go play ”)

Make sure that you ask them to share what they did and reinforce the skill with your enthusiasm.

How to Teach Children Foreign Languages?

GAMES AND ACTIVITIES

What’s missing?MATERIAL:Table, Different objects

INSTRUCTIONS:1 Put some objects on a table, for all the class to see.2 Go through each item repeting the word in english. 3 Then ask a student to remember all the iterms on the table.4 Get that student to leave the room. 5 Take an item off the table and then get that student to come back into the room and tell the rest of the class what item ismissing in english.

OBJECTIVE:This activity is helpfull for teaching or practice new vocabulary

- HOW CAN YOU USE THIS ACTIVITY IN ANOTHER CONTEXT?

Teaching GrammarMATERIAL:New sentences in colors in the board

ACTIVITY DEVELOPMENT:When you are teaching children a new conversation/sentenceand don't want to get bogged down with grammatical explanationsimply write the new sentence in colors on the board. Forexample...

OBJECTIVE:This activity helps students to teach and practice grammaticalexplanations.

- HOW CAN YOU USE THIS ACTIVITY IN ANOTHER CONTEXT?

Find the FlashcardMATERIAL:Flashcards

INSTRUCTIONS:Put flashcard randomly throughout the classroomCall out an item and the first student to get the card, holds itup and name it

OBJECTIVE:This is a fun game to revise words from flashcards, activityhelps for teaching or practice new vocabulary

- HOW CAN YOU USE THIS ACTIVITY IN ANOTHER CONTEXT?

Revising WordsMATERIAL:Flashcards

ACTIVITY DEVELOPMENT:Divide the class in two groups and give any group a name - A and B orsomething else.Then the students will make a line.One player of the A-group and one of the B-group try to tell as quick as possible the word that is on a flashcard.The one who does it first takes the flashcard and wins a point for his / herteam The winner is the team with more points

OBJECTIVE:This activity helps revision of already learned words:

- HOW CAN YOU USE THIS ACTIVITY IN ANOTHER CONTEXT?

Running Chinese Whisper

MATERIAL:Flashcards , vocabulary words or pictures

ACTIVITY DEVELOPMENT:1 Put some pictures or visuals on the board.2 Divide the class into 2 teams facing the board.3 Stand at the back of the classroom and call one student from each line overto you.4 Whisper a word from the board to the students, who then have to run back to their team and whisper it to the next person in their line.5 The whispers carry on down the line until they reach the person at the frontwho has to find the picture, slam it with their hand and shout the name. 6 This game can also be used with any vocabulary being used (fruit, family etc)

- HOW CAN YOU USE THIS ACTIVITY IN ANOTHER CONTEXT?

Pass the Words

MATERIAL:Paper with Definitions of words

INSTRUCTIONS:1 Play some music and students start passing one paper.

2 When the music stops, the student with the paper must saythe word.

- HOW CAN YOU USE THIS ACTIVITY IN ANOTHER CONTEXT?

Hot Potatoe

MATERIAL:Ball

INSTRUCTIONS:1 Students stand in a circle.

2 The student holding the ball must say one of their unitvocabulary words in English.

3 If they do this correctly, they may pass the ball to anotherstudent and then that student repeats the same process.

4 Encourage quick thinking, reminding the students that the ballis a hot potato.

Hatschi Patschi

ACTIVITY DEVELOPMENT:1 Students sit in a circle on chairs (all facing into the circle).

2 One student is "it" and has to stand facing away from the circle.

3 The teacher gets all students in the circle to close their eyes and then proceeds to tap 3 students on the head.

4 All students may then open their eyes and the person that is "it" may come intothe circle.

5 This student will go around the circle asking individual students a question in thetarget language. Each student is required to give a correct answer, except for thestudents that have been tapped on the head.

6 When a question is addressed to them they simply call out "Hatschi Patschi", which is the signal for all students in the circle to jump up and run to a differentchair (incl. the student who was in the middle).

5 The new student left without a chair is now "it" and the game begins again Callout an item and the first student to get the card, holds it up and name it

Tips with Flashcard

ACTIVITY DEVELOPMENT:

Firstly go through the vocabulary using a listen and repeat technique. To practice the vocabulary use these games;

1) Who has a…?

Students hold the flashcards at the front of the class in a line, they then turnthemselves so their backs are to the rest of the class. They then muddlethemselves up (not the cards but the people!).

The teacher then asks “who has a” and the item on a flashcard. This ensures thestudents are continuously thinking about the vocabulary.

Hidden WordsACTIVITY DEVELOPMENT:

Hide words from the language you are teaching in a snake so that they are allbunched up, e.g. in English, write 'helloareyouokwhatareyoudoingtoday'.

Then the students would have to put lines in these words so that they makesense... hello_are_you_ok_what_are_you_doing_today.

You can do this in any language as long as the words are spelt correctly and thechildren have been taught them previously.

- HOW CAN YOU USE THIS ACTIVITY IN ANOTHER CONTEXT?

MOTIVATION

Using Photos - AuthenticityACTIVITY DEVELOPMENT:

Students can be very curious and inquisitive.Given half the chance they want to know more about you and your life outside the classroom. It is a personal decision how much of yourself youwant to give away and share with your students.

Personalizing really helps to increase students' interest levels.

Using photos can really help to spark genuine interest and generate a lot of language. Topics that lend themselves to the use of photos are describingpeople, family, holidays or describing places.

How much more interesting to describe a photo of the teacher's friend or sisterthan to describe a photo of a random unknown man in a book? How muchmore engaging to see holiday photos from the teacher's summer break ratherthan the typical desert island shots used in course books? Grammar lessons can also be supported with photos. To give a simple example, teaching 'used to' becomes much more memorable when sentences with a visual image can be formed. Eg. "my teacher used to have long hair and a moustache"

Music Acceptance

ACTIVITY DEVELOPMENT:

Students love listening to music. Due to the fact that so much popular music is in English it can be a source for highly motivating activities.

Although it can be tempting to only use music in the class that you enjoylistening to, teenagers really appreciate it if you make the effort to find outwhat they like listening to.

To get this information students can write surveys to do with the class to find out the top five favorite bands. When you know what they like to listen to encourage students to lend you the CDs

Find the FlashcardMost teachers have a variety of activities to use with songs. Lyrics can be easily found on the internet and there are many opportunities to exploitlanguage in songs. Students themselves can be involved in creatingactivities to use with their favorite songs.

Having music on in the background can really change the atmosphere of a classroom.

. By accepting their music tastes and 'tuning in' to them, the motivationlevels of a class can be improved. Students know a lot about music and willbe willing to tell you all about it. Rather than ignoring the differences in taste between them and you, exploit them and use them as a real information gap!

- HOW CAN YOU USE THIS ACTIVITY IN ANOTHER CONTEXT?

LESSON PLANING

FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTOR INSTRUCTIONS