Teaching can be incredibly rewarding, and sometimes very tiring. It’s important every once in a while to remind yourself why you do what you do. For me, it can be summed up by a passage from Michael Lewis’s excellent book, The Lexical Approach. “…language is important and … language teaching is useful and valuable. A… Read more »
Creating a warm classroom for young learners
We frequently get asked about setting up classrooms for young learners. I’d like to share some photos from Brit’s English in Okayama, Japan. When owner Jamie Marden decided to build a new school, he set aside one classroom to be his “Super Simple Songs” room (thanks Jamie!) for children 2-6 years old. Notice how uncluttered… Read more »
ASL Songs
We had a great time presenting at the Tokyo English Language Book Fair a couple of weeks ago. We were very happy to have our display right across from a display for “Signing Time“, an amazing resource for teaching American Sign Language (ASL) to young learners. By the end of the weekend, Troy and Tanja… Read more »
“Uh-Huh” Activity
We’ve been having a lot of fun this week in class with Devon’s warm up activity that uses “Uh-Huh” from Super Simple Songs Two. Place a jump rope or long rope across the center of the room. Place one sign that says “YES” and one sign that says “NO” on opposite sides of the room…. Read more »
