Speaking games for students who can't read
Posted: 16 Aug 2011, 15:33
Dear all,
How to improve English speaking for 7-10 year olds
OR
Any English speaking games that don't involve reading?
I teach in Hong Kong and I have to play my speaking/oral lessons for students.
2-5 year olds - I have no problems. I sing, I dance, I describe things for them to draw, they play in English, it's fun. I even do arts and craft (although I can't draw to save my life, the kids love it!)
Problem - I have classes for older students (7-10 years old). The girls have very good reading skills and so do 1 or 2 of the boys.
But amongst the class, I have some boys who can't read (or can phonetically sound out words, but don't understand the meaning).
I'm not able to separate the students because their schedules clash with other extracurriculum activities.
I can physically see some of my boy students cower when there is a small amount of text to read (for example, a sentence said "A cat in a hat" and I tried to concept check the meaning of the sentence. Some of my students didn't understand or couldn't read this sentence).
The parents refuse to take up reading classes, so I'm stuck with continuing the speaking lessons for them. I've tried games such as noughts and crosses (although one of my students struggled to understand the concept, even when another student explained the rules to him in their native language), matching pairs, spot the difference, pointing and naming things, simon says (although, they groaned and said it was immature in their native language), I spy...
I've even had one of the boys, week in and week out, not being able to say "Candy". For the past few months, I've always told him before and after class that it's "Candy" before giving it to him. He still always says "Kinder", even now.
I've been reading very short and simple stories to the children (some of which are from their native Hong Kong tales), and asking them simple questions about it "who was the animal?" "What did the animal eat?" etc, etc.
They even get a copy of the short story/poem to take home to read. (it's about 16 sentences long, 20-30 words, using simple words like cat/hat/mat/am/jam/ram etc,etc) ... but whether their parents read it to them is another story...
Does anyone else have any game ideas, where there is lots of speaking? and it requires no reading whatsoever?
OR ... should I just keep plugging away and hope that the children start to pick up the English language.
Sorry for the long rant, I've had mixed success with my lessons and just feel that I need some extra ideas to help my weaker students.
How to improve English speaking for 7-10 year olds
OR
Any English speaking games that don't involve reading?
I teach in Hong Kong and I have to play my speaking/oral lessons for students.
2-5 year olds - I have no problems. I sing, I dance, I describe things for them to draw, they play in English, it's fun. I even do arts and craft (although I can't draw to save my life, the kids love it!)
Problem - I have classes for older students (7-10 years old). The girls have very good reading skills and so do 1 or 2 of the boys.
But amongst the class, I have some boys who can't read (or can phonetically sound out words, but don't understand the meaning).
I'm not able to separate the students because their schedules clash with other extracurriculum activities.
I can physically see some of my boy students cower when there is a small amount of text to read (for example, a sentence said "A cat in a hat" and I tried to concept check the meaning of the sentence. Some of my students didn't understand or couldn't read this sentence).
The parents refuse to take up reading classes, so I'm stuck with continuing the speaking lessons for them. I've tried games such as noughts and crosses (although one of my students struggled to understand the concept, even when another student explained the rules to him in their native language), matching pairs, spot the difference, pointing and naming things, simon says (although, they groaned and said it was immature in their native language), I spy...
I've even had one of the boys, week in and week out, not being able to say "Candy". For the past few months, I've always told him before and after class that it's "Candy" before giving it to him. He still always says "Kinder", even now.
I've been reading very short and simple stories to the children (some of which are from their native Hong Kong tales), and asking them simple questions about it "who was the animal?" "What did the animal eat?" etc, etc.
They even get a copy of the short story/poem to take home to read. (it's about 16 sentences long, 20-30 words, using simple words like cat/hat/mat/am/jam/ram etc,etc) ... but whether their parents read it to them is another story...
Does anyone else have any game ideas, where there is lots of speaking? and it requires no reading whatsoever?
OR ... should I just keep plugging away and hope that the children start to pick up the English language.
Sorry for the long rant, I've had mixed success with my lessons and just feel that I need some extra ideas to help my weaker students.