Below are some suggested activities which
the volunteer may find useful to involve the student in the learning
process.
Teaching Prepositions
Level: Pre-Literacy/Low Beginner
Total Physical Response is a great way to teach new prepositions. All you
need is a box, and four or five other objects. Once you have taught your
student the names of all of the objects you are using, and the command
"Put", you can teach prepositions. For example, "Put the
candy in the box. Put the flower next to the box. Put the book between the
box and the flower." The variations on this theme are endless-you can
use new objects to review the prepositions in later lessons, and build up
to asking more complex questions like "Where is the candy?"
Cooking and
Recipes
Level: All
Cooking is a subject close to the heart of many of our students, and so, it
provides an opportunity to talk about things your student already knows a
great deal about. You can use a recipe to teach measurements, food names,
and cooking directions. Make it a TPR lesson, where you read out loud the
directions, and your student follows each step in the recipe with the
required action. Or, turn it into a Language Experience Approach lesson,
where your student tells you about something she likes to make, and you ask
her to describe each step in making this dish, and transcribe the steps
involved, and turn it into an English language recipe.
Writing a Journal
Level: High Beginner and above
Have your student keep a daily or weekly journal about her experiences
adjusting to life in San Francisco. For higher level students, suggest that
they keep track of any questions that come up during the week, whether the
question is about English grammar, a new word, or a puzzling aspect of
American culture. This journal can then become the basis for lessons, and
allows you to be tremendously responsive to your student's needs. The
journal itself can also be used to help develop your student's writing
skills; read through it and write something back to your student, that she
can respond to in the next lesson. Make a note of any common mistakes your
student makes in her writing.
Shopping List
Level: Beginner
Using a supermarket flyer or store catalogue, help your student make a
shopping list of items she'd like to or needs to buy. Ask her questions
about the flyer. "How much is the chicken? How many sodas can you buy
for $1.00?" Have her point to the right words if she is a very low
beginner, and build up to other activities later.
Matching Game
Level: All
This is a good way to assess your student's understanding of new vocabulary.
Design a "matching" game, where your student matches the words in
one column to the words in the opposite column. You can have her match
words that are opposites, words that are in the same category (for example,
she could match place names with the people who work there such as post
office/mailman), words that are the same part of speech, whatever you
decide your student needs to practice.
Concentration
Level: Pre-Literacy to Low Beginner
For students with limited literacy skills, concentration can be a fun way
to test sight recognition of words. Work with eight or nine words you have
already taught. For each word card, there should be a picture card as well.
Place all the cards face down. Then, have her match the words to the
pictures.
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