I once did a presentation called “Five Fabulous Favorites.” The five fab faves are five games or activities that are favorites—of mine and of my students—in my classroom. They are favorites because they are especially fun, especially useful, or especially effective—or, in most cases, all of the above!
The five favorites are:
• SPELLING SETS
An individual activity (each child works on his or her own set) for kids learning phonics-based spelling.
Not only does it develop encoding skills, but, done properly, it can help even the least-confident child overcome their fear of making mistakes.
Teaching phonics and autonomy at the same time—What could be better?!
• RPD (Relaxed Pronunciation Dictation)
This really helps to sharpen the listening comprehension of older language learners. And they LOVE it!
• BALLOON BUMP
A simple, but really fun, physical activity that can be used with a wide variety of language targets. All you need is one balloon!
• TEXTLESS STORYBOOKS
The story is in the pictures; the “text” is all from the readers!
• LISTENING HOMEWORK
If you teach once-a-week one-hour classes like I do, your students have six days and 23 hours between lessons during which they might not hear a single word of English. Yikes!
Fix that problem! Here’s how.
Here is a link to the presentation handout, which will tell you lots more about these: 5 Fab Faves PDF