I have been teaching here for eight years, but I was teaching elementary school and junior high school aged kids for 6 years of that. For the past 2 years I have also been doing kindergarten in the mornings. I find reading in my youngest morning class, despite management saying that I am doing well, my heart isn’t in it.
I am putting this down to the fact that the way I am teaching is very straightforward and dry for this particular class - an issue I don’t have in my older classes because I can relate to the kids more and they are completely into my sense of humor that I use when teaching.
I usually open with greetings, time, date, weather… so far so good. Then we jump into keywords and pronunciation for around 30 minutes including a game. The problem is holding their attention during games, and once the reading itself starts, most of them drift off. They are 3-4 years old and a nice bunch, but i can’t seem to hold their interest.
The same is true with phonics. We do phonic pronunciation (of today’s focus letters), keywords and then talk about the pictures in the books. Many of them find it really hard and are drifting off. They again find it hard to focus.
Does anyone have any ideas that I can use? This kindergarten stuff is easy at intermediate and upper levels but the really young ones feel like they are so hard to keep a hold of.
No. No better ideas, if the school is going to insist on teaching English phonics to a bunch of kids who aren’t even literate in their own language yet, who probably have had no introduction to what discrete sounds are in their own native language, and who don’t speak English. Three year olds! I had three and four year olds in the States in a situation where the management wanted me to teach them Pinyin (they were learning Mandarin), but fortunately I was able to quit. 
They didn’t even know their colors, let alone how to say them in 2 languages and spell them!
I feel for you, though. Just make each activity as short as possible – certainly no more than 5 minutes – and put something that gets them moving or gesturing in between the “dry” stuff.
[quote=“ironlady”]No. No better ideas, if the school is going to insist on teaching English phonics to a bunch of kids who aren’t even literate in their own language yet, who probably have had no introduction to what discrete sounds are in their own native language, and who don’t speak English. Three year olds! I had three and four year olds in the States in a situation where the management wanted me to teach them Pinyin (they were learning Mandarin), but fortunately I was able to quit. They didn’t even know their colors, let alone how to say them in 2 languages and spell them!
I feel for you, though. Just make each activity as short as possible – certainly no more than 5 minutes – and put something that gets them moving or gesturing in between the “dry” stuff.[/quote]
Well, the reading books are Ladybird 1a. They are easy enough. I thought about using the keyword actions that we use for the flashcards when reading the books. It just gets a bit crazy when the word, “Jane” is expected to last a whole hour. I just thought NO WAY and I put all the flashcards on the wall. The kids repeat after me, and that’s all until they start to pick up one or two of them on sight.
I just made some nice laminated flashcards, one for each written keywords and one for the related pictures. I am going to try drilling the words with me and then matching them to the pictures.
Even simple games, however are struggling to work. I had eight of the kids take one of the old flashcards, while one kid chose a matching face-down word card from a deck I was holding. They had to repeat it after me and find who had the matching card. The other kids sat on their cards - or at least were supposed to - and see who could find the card in the smallest number of guesses. The kids just wouldn’t stay sat down. They wouldn’t conceal their cards. I don’t usually have help from the CT because I don’t need it and she is always busy, but even with her helping me on that occasion, it was no use. I have one kid who just sits there lolling his tongue around in his mouth all the time (literally).
I am going to work on the phonics as simply teaching them that “alligator” is an “A” words etc. I am not going to focus on the recognition of the phonetic A sound.
Do you have any kids of your own, OP? If you do then think about how they picked up language then do the same in the classroom with these kindy kids.
If you don’t then my advice is to stop even attempting to teach these kindy kids like you have previously taught older children. Sit down on the floor and read with them. Let them point at the pictures as they listen to you. Don’t worry if they appear not to be listening. Don’t drill them or make them speak (unless you are being observed by a Taiwanese teacher).
Are you teaching the class the very beginnings such as letter-sound relationships, or do they know this already? They might need more exposure to more words to help them build a decent vocabulary base before reading, so use of rhymes and songs will always help with this.
Do you have art supplies in the classroom, and are you allowed to do craft activities with the kids? For example, if this week’s letter is “J” for “Jane”, you could
Do some J art as a class or individually - Scholastic has a great book “Art through the Alphabet” that has a page of activities for each letter. Off the top of my head, things like balloon painting for B, doing apple prints with real apples for A…
Have all the kids make their own jackets using cloth scraps and a jacket outline, and stick them on a giant “J” that hangs from the ceiling
Make “Jane” and “Jack” masks on sticks (or jaguar) and make up a simple puppet show that you put on for the kids. Everytime they see a “J” face they have to say the name out loud together.
Can the kids retell the “Jane” story to you in simple English? They tell you in say five steps and you draw a storyboard as they retell the story. Or you tell the story adding some silly parts and they need to tell you when you are wrong (sequencing is an important skill for literacy and kids don’t get enough practice)
Make a big book version of your reader as a class. You write the words on sheets of A3 paper and the kids draw, paste, or color the corresponding picture on each page. Then, use that as your class story book instead of the small versions.
Get a bunch of books from the school library and have the kids search for “J” letters in the books
Search for and cut out “J” from magazines and newspapers, and make a “J” collage
Oh, and lots of roleplay. Bring along a few things to dress up in or to use as props and act out what it is in the books you are reading.
[quote=“tomthorne”]Do you have any kids of your own, OP? If you do then think about how they picked up language then do the same in the classroom with these kindy kids.
If you don’t then my advice is to stop even attempting to teach these kindy kids like you have previously taught older children. Sit down on the floor and read with them. Let them point at the pictures as they listen to you. Don’t worry if they appear not to be listening. Don’t drill them or make them speak (unless you are being observed by a Taiwanese teacher).[/quote]
I have an 18 month old boy. He isn’t speaking yet because he is leaning English, Mandarin and TW at the same time, so he will be slower to start in any of them.
The problem for me is that the school says I have to follow the books. The book is Phono Zoo. I copy the pages huge on the whiteboard and make my own flash cards. Originally, I put the key words and picture on the same card, but now I am going to have one for picture and one for word, like I do in reading. I am going to use more words, too, as suggested. The school says I have to use the CD, but the CD is really fast for the kids, so I will read the CD content slowly (it follows the book exactly) and then play the CD once so they know how to listen to it at home.
As for the previous post, these kids have zero English experience. A few of them can do the phonetic sound imitation, but a couple of them are really struggling. Most of them have poorly developed motor skills, so they can’t do craft within the alotted time for each class.
[quote=“Reaperjim”]
The problem for me is that the school says I have to follow the books. [/quote]
This is the same problem I had during my brief stint teaching kindy. You may not be able to believe it, but it was even worse in the school I worked in. Not satisfied with the idiocy of the phonetic alphabet they even tried to teach the kids the names of the parts of speech in Chinese. Just nuts. I threw in the towel after about 6 months of lunacy. I sometimes wonder whether any parents here actually observe their kids growing up.
It’s a crying shame because I loved teaching youngsters.
Good luck!
Here’s an idea with flashcards. Say you have 8 words. Set up 8 mini activities, 1 thing that might need guidance and a couple of ‘play’ or ‘make-it’ activities. Each activity is associated with a word on the flashcards. After ‘teaching’ the cards well enough that you think it’ll do divide em up into groups and each team draws a card. Then they have to figure out where they’re going. Change the teams around by saying things like ‘Jane, Bridge, SWAP!’ after X minutes.
You could have it where things like ‘Jane’ are drawing pictures of Jane and sticking them on the wall in that area, ‘bridge’ could be building a bridge with blocks, ‘boats’ could be water-play (or if you don’t have water play areas, then painting boats).
I’ve never taught kindy, so I have no idea if this would work. But it sounds like fun to try. And there’s something in it for them to remember the words a little better than just chanting. Then when they’ve been running around for a good hour or so sit them down and read the story.
This is my theory good idea. If the heavens come together… 
[quote=“tsukinodeynatsu”]Here’s an idea with flashcards. Say you have 8 words. Set up 8 mini activities, 1 thing that might need guidance and a couple of ‘play’ or ‘make-it’ activities. Each activity is associated with a word on the flashcards. After ‘teaching’ the cards well enough that you think it’ll do divide em up into groups and each team draws a card. Then they have to figure out where they’re going. Change the teams around by saying things like ‘Jane, Bridge, SWAP!’ after X minutes.
You could have it where things like ‘Jane’ are drawing pictures of Jane and sticking them on the wall in that area, ‘bridge’ could be building a bridge with blocks, ‘boats’ could be water-play (or if you don’t have water play areas, then painting boats).
I’ve never taught kindy, so I have no idea if this would work. But it sounds like fun to try. And there’s something in it for them to remember the words a little better than just chanting. Then when they’ve been running around for a good hour or so sit them down and read the story.
This is my theory good idea. If the heavens come together… [/quote]
Well, its the guidance part that is a big issue. These kids are too young and inexperience in their own language to understand what to do, never mind have me explain it in English. And trying to get the CT to help is not always an option (they are bogged down in paperwork so much that the title, “Teaching Assistant” seems almost inappropriate). I think I can try a couple of activities that are really simple, one focused on really simple art/craft and the other based on actually doing the books, and use the craft one as a reward.If that works, I could add more.
I’ll not get my hopes up, though. We have an issue at my school in that a lot of kids stroll into school like halfway through class. Their parents said they were playing or sleeping. Then then get pissed when their kids fall behind. I try to just ignore it at work though.
Depending on the size of the class, it is definitely possible to give 3-year-olds a good grounding in the names and primary phonetic sounds of the letters, but that’s all you should be aiming for. If the school wants you teaching them whole words and reading stories, that’s just going to be memorization, not actual reading. There’s no harm in it - it has some use in getting them used to the activity and the idea of actually reading a book - but focus your attentions on the primary phonics.
But you say you have a problem with their attention and guiding them. That’s all classroom management and control. It’s REALLY important in a beginner kindy class. You need to spend a LOT of time jsut teaching them to understand and respond to classroom English - commands and the names of things around the class and things they use. Lots of TPR etc. You need to just get them used to sitting still listening to you and each other and responding appropriately. They’re not going to be doing any useful learning otherwise. I find that once this is mastered, your ‘games’ (activities or whatever) don’t need to be particularly ‘exciting’. The kids will have learnt to engage in the lesson in a better way than just responding to excitement.
[quote=“Bu Lai En”]Depending on the size of the class, it is definitely possible to give 3-year-olds a good grounding in the names and primary phonetic sounds of the letters, but that’s all you should be aiming for. If the school wants you teaching them whole words and reading stories, that’s just going to be memorization, not actual reading. There’s no harm in it - it has some use in getting them used to the activity and the idea of actually reading a book - but focus your attentions on the primary phonics.
But you say you have a problem with their attention and guiding them. That’s all classroom management and control. It’s REALLY important in a beginner kindy class. You need to spend a LOT of time jsut teaching them to understand and respond to classroom English - commands and the names of things around the class and things they use. Lots of TPR etc. You need to just get them used to sitting still listening to you and each other and responding appropriately. They’re not going to be doing any useful learning otherwise. I find that once this is mastered, your ‘games’ (activities or whatever) don’t need to be particularly ‘exciting’. The kids will have learnt to engage in the lesson in a better way than just responding to excitement.[/quote]
Yeah, I am finding that my issue in the really young classes is getting them involved. It’s not a problem in my other classes at all. I’ll try to take all of the advice above and incorporate it - especially the TPR part - into short games and hopefully the sense of physical expression in this approach will get the kids involved. I really need to watch someone doing this. That would help.