Materials

Why are materials important when teaching English to children? Do we can create the materials we will use in classes by ourselves? In this workshop, I learned how to integrate  different and creative activities by making use of materials which can be created by ourselves. One of the advantages to create our own materials for the class is that they result cheaper, catchy for student’s sight, and we can apply our creativity on them.

Materials such as flash cards can be used in order children practice vocabulary about a topic we have already taught. As well, flip cards are useful and convenient if our main objective is to allow children to practice reading skill.

Moreover, there are materials such as clay which can not be only used to ask students create a figure but to help them to develop or improve their sensory and fine - gross motor skills. An important detail about modeling clay is that can be used to calm down children. As we already know children are full of energy and sometimes they get easily distracted in class, a good way to calm them down is throught a modeling clay technique; as well they get focused when they get their hands on clay due to its texture.

Furthermore, grouping techniques are so important when teaching children. Through grouping techniques, children are able to practice the language with classmates. At the same time they can also interact to each other and work on little tasks and projects. There are different strategies we can use to create groups in our classes. For example, we can put 3  pieces of color paper in a box ans ask children to get together all color “green”, also providing pieces of paper with a half of an animal (if we will teach animals) and asks children to look for the person who was the other half of the image, and so on.

Besides, in this workshop I learned that puppets are a good strategy to motivate children, make them feel part of the class, get them interested on learning and to speak English. Puppets are an effective way to get children’s attention for the reason that they are catchy and children enjoy them.  It is important to mention that we can create our own puppets according to the topic we will teach using materials we have in home (bottons, wool, old cloth, socks, etc).

In addition, musical instruments are useful if we are looking for an activity that help our students to memorize vocabulary. I learn that musical instruments stimulate children’s learning. Instruments can be created with a can of soda, stones, seeds, sand, etc. It also can be painted with different colors and paper.

 

During this workshop, my classmates also showed an interesting material called “Spining Wheel”. I would like to use it with future students. Spining Wheel can be used to teach vocabulary such as animals, color, fruits, verbs, body parts, etc. One of the advantages of this material is that can be placed in the classrrom and adapted as many times we want according to what we are going to teach. 

 

To conclude, we are able to create material by ourselves according to the lesson we will teach. It is an important  to take into account the color and size of materials; remember that the materials we provid ein classes have to be catchy in order students get interested. There are different materials we can create by ourselves in order to get student’s attention, help them to learn the language as well to develop their fine and gross motor skills by creating an interactive environment.