Check out this amazing video from Eva and her students in Slovakia.  Now this is what Christmas looks like!

Super Simple Songs – Christmas includes this version and a karaoke track so you can add your own actions to the song.

Student passports are a great teaching tool!

As teachers, we are always looking for ways to engage with our students. When teaching children in groups, it’s often difficult to find ways to interact with students individually using natural dialog. One tool that we’ve found particularly helpful is a student “passport”.

Students of all ages, from the very young to our older kids, look forward to this part of the lesson. Passports can be used in a number of different ways and are easy to incorporate into your lessons. Whether you see your students only once a week, or daily, you can easily make passports a fun part of your time together.

They are a great review tool and they become a fun momento for your students at the end of the year. You’ll find that many of your students will take great pride in the fact that they have a passport full of stickers by year-end. It’s also a great incentive for them to always come to class!

Download and print this free English Passport. It’s double sided, but if resources are an issue, you can print just the outside and leave the inside blank for stamps and stickers. If possible, print it on thicker paper so that it will last the whole year.

Here are just a few suggested ways that you can incorporate passports into your lessons.

Small Classes

• Gather passports at the beginning of class. You can make it a separate activity or incorporate it into another part of the lesson.

• For a separate activity, you can start by counting the number of passports, looking at the cover, pointing out the details on the front. Talk about forms of transportation, types of animals, etc.

• Use a choosing rhyme or game, such as “Eeny, Meeney, Miney, Moe” from Super Simple Songs 2 to select the first student.

• Or, fan the passports out in your hand with covers facing you (like in a card game) and have the students pick the passports one at at a time.

• For very small classes or days when students are absent, we like to have a few spare passports on hand and assign them to some stuffed animals or puppets!

Large Classes

• Gather passports from students at the beginning of class and set them aside. As student’s finish their workbook or activity sheet, you can return their passport as you check their work.

• You can also split the group into teams or smaller groups and select several student’s to be your ‘passport assistants.’ Demonstrate the dialogue or language you would like them to practice and supervise as the ‘assistants’ interact with the other students in their group.

• Set up a stamp or sticker station so that students can get their own. Ask them a couple of questions and then send them to make their choice at the station. Of course, this will need to be for older students only.

Tips and Suggestions

• If you see your students more than once a week, you can select one day as passport day. This is a great opportunity to review the week’s lessons and do an informal assessment of student’s progress.

• Have students line up, have a stack of flashcards or picture cards with the week’s vocabulary. As each student comes to the front of the line, greet them and ask their name. Have them select two or three cards from the pile and identify them. Alternatively, you can select which words to ask the students. After their response, congratulate them and offer them a stamp. Present them two or three stamp or sticker choices that they will have to request by name.

• While students are waiting their turn in line, they can count how many stamps they have and review previous topics.

• Which color? Which stamp? How many? and Where? are just a few of the questions that you can ask students with their passports.

• Use seasonal or topic related stamps to help with review later on. Or how about using the letters of the alphabet? This gives students a real sense of accomplishment as they watch their letter collection grow!!

• For very young students, you might want to limit the number of choices of stickers or stamps. It can be a tough choice for a little one! And if things are taking too long, a gentle nudge in the right direction (3….2…..1….Let’s choooooooose….this one!) is fine!

Share

Do you use passports at your class or school? Share your teaching tips and ideas with other teachers below!

One of the reasons it was so exciting to participate in this series was the commitment to using songs as teaching tools. This series includes over 100 songs from the Starter Level to Level 6. Songs are a big part of every level.

Here’s one of the songs Troy and Devon made for the Everybody Up Starter Level, “How Many?“:

Want to hear a few more songs from the series? Check out the Everybody Up Global Sing-along, where you can download five free songs (including “How Many?”), lyrics sheets, a certificate of participation, and ten terrific tips for teaching with songs written by Devon.

If you are looking for songs from the Super Simple Learning team, start with the Everybody Up Starter Level book w/CD. It includes 25 simple songs by Troy and Devon covering topics like counting, classroom vocabulary, colors, manners, food, animals, action verbs, and more. It also includes a great new alphabet song and the Everybody Up theme song from Julie Gold. It’s a wonderful coursebook for young learners, and a really fun CD if all you are looking for is songs.

Check it out and let us know what you think!

Halloween is filled with all sorts of colorful characters. Meet witches and ghosts, spiders and bats, cowboys, pirates, monsters, and more! There’s a lot of vocabulary to have fun with. One way to help young learners remember all these new words is by associating the word with a gesture. Gestures serve as a memory trigger and they are just fun to do.

Most Super Simple Songs are designed to be used with gestures. When you use gestures, very little pre-teaching is necessary. Teachers can seat the students in a circle and use the Halloween picture cards to teach some simple motions to go with each word. It’s always a good idea to have the students create the gestures themselves.  When they create the gestures, it helps them internalize the language even more. Then have everyone stand up and play the music. You can sing along and demonstrate the song while the students follow your lead. Many kids will start to sing along as well, but even the kids who aren’t ready to sing will be able to participate with the gestures.

One of our favorite songs to sing in October is Hello, My Friends from Super Simple Songs – Halloween. It introduces a number of common Halloween characters/costumes in a super friendly way. Doing all of the gestures to the song is just challenging enough to keep the song interesting all month as we head into Halloween.

Hello, My Friends Lyric and Gesture Guide

Hello, my friends. Hello, my friends. (make a sweeping wave, first with one hand, then the other)
I’m so happy (point to yourself, then point to you cheeks with your index fingers as you smile)
to see you. (point to your eyes then point out)
Hello, my friends. Hello, my friends.
Let’s go (extend your pointer finger and thumb in the shape of an “L,”, bring your hands up to your chest and then point outwards)
trick or treating (extend your hands out, palms up, first right than left)

Witches (make the shape of a pointy hat above your head)
and ghosts. (put hands close to the body at chest level and wiggle your fingers)
Witches and ghosts.
Cowboys, (circle one fist above your head like using a lasso)
pirates, (cover one eye with your hand like a patch)
and monsters. (outstretch arms and walk slowly with straight legs)
Spiders (cross your wrists and wiggle your fingers)
and bats. (cross arms over your chest like a sleeping bat)
Spiders and bats.
Let’s go trick-or-treating.

Hello, my friends. Hello, my friends.
I’m so happy to see you.
Hello, my friends. Hello, my friends.
Let’s go trick-or-treating.
Let’s go trick-or-treating.

These are just some suggestions, feel free to make up your own. Or create the gestures together with the kids.

You’ll bring your Halloween characters to life by acting them out with gestures!

How many spiders?

One of the first skills we work on with our students is counting, and one of the first phrases we teach is “How many?”. We don’t drill or force the students, just constantly practice counting as part of our lessons. Learning the numbers is a fun and easy way for students to build confidence and enjoy English. There are many ways to incorporate this into your lessons through songs, worksheets, story time books and simply by counting everything around you.

Even older students benefit from the constant review. Challenge them with increasingly larger numbers, make sure they are correctly pronouncing their ‘teens’ (thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, etc.) and have them spell out the words instead of writing the numbers.

Five Creepy Spiders

In addition to counting, Five Creepy Spiders from Super Simple Songs – Halloween works on action verbs. Crawl, run, dance, fly, and haunt with Halloween characters. To round out a lesson, print a Five Creepy Spiders Halloween worksheet appropriate to the student’s age and ability level. There are several to choose from.

For beginning learners, counting the number of spiders, ghosts, skeletons, cats and witches is enough. Older students can work on numbers from 0 to 9. They can either circle the number (identification), write the number, or write out the word. There’s a worksheet for each of these in the printables area of the CD.

One For You, One For Me

There’s no end to counting activities that you can do. Here’s another idea to practice counting and manners using One For You, One For Me, also from the Super Simple Songs – Halloween CD.

Activity – Let’s Share

One For Me, One For You

Sit down with a child and an even number (10, 12, 20, etc.) of objects that you can share (candy, pom poms, marbles, etc). Say, “Let’s share, okay?” Start dividing the objects between the two of you while saying, “One for you, one for me. Two for you. Two for me. Three for you. Three for me.” When you have finished dividing the objects, count them together. Put all of the objects back in the middle and repeat. Let the child take the lead.

For the classroom, give pairs of students a bag with pom poms (or other small objects) and let them practice counting and sharing together.

As with any activities with young learners and small objects, please supervise closely!

Our favorite song for Valentine’s Day is Skidamarink.  It is, of course, super simple and super fun. We usually play the song in the background as we make Valentine’s Day cards or explore some Valentine’s Day worksheets.  By the time we are finished with the cards or worksheets, all of the kids are familiar with the melody and most of the words and are ready to learn the gestures and sing.

Many people ask us what “Skidamarink” means.  The answer is… nothing.  It’s just a fun word kids really enjoy playing with.

Check out the song, lyrics, gestures, video, and FREE Valentine’s Day worksheets on our Skidamarink page.

We’d love to know what you do for Valentine’s Day.  Let us know by leaving a comment!

Skidamarink a dinky dink.  Skidamarink a doo.  We love you!

When creating a Super Simple Song, we always think about the gestures and movements that will go along with the songs, and frequently visit the American Sign Language Browser for ideas.  As a result, we’ve gotten a lot of great feedback from ASL teachers, as well as Baby Sign teachers.  When you put the gestures and signs together with the words and the songs, it’s very powerful.

Language learners depend a LOT on non-verbal cues to make sense of the new input they are receiving.  Children especially rely on non-verbal cues, and their natural interest in learning to master their motor skills makes the pairing of the spoken word and signing a really excellent tool for helping children internalize the langauge they are learning.

Looking for an easy song to teach through ASL?  Try Open Shut Them (you’ll need to check the ASL Browser for the correct signs), and let us know how it goes!

- Devon