Preschool Teaching

One of the most frequent inquiries on the Ask Judie Bulletin Board is from preschool teachers all over
the world. They have asked for themes, lessons, and materials to implement in their preschool classes.
Here are some ideas that will help answer their questions.

"Help! I am teaching four and five year olds. What do I do?" you ask. Have you searched the internet?
There is a wealth of information on early childhood or preschool teaching. Search also under "home
schooling" and "daycare." These sites are designed to teach basic concepts to native English speakers
but lessons can be adapted for ELLs.

What do you need to do to effectively teach the ELLs in your preschool class?

1. Three and four year olds seem to be constantly in motion and have boundless energy. Action-based
activities will grab their attention and keep their interest. Children of this age group enjoy movement
play. Emphasize acting out stories, repeating predictable text, puppetry, chants, rhymes, finger plays,
songs, and role-playing. Have students make believe by playing house or pretending to be firefighters.
Teach them to play games. Let them run jump, skip, dance and hop. These activities can be utilized to
encourage verbal expression and language development. Use what these children love to do in order to
help them learn.

2. Develop oral language skills. Teach young ELLs to speak and understand English first. They need to
learn vocabulary dealing with greetings, families, body parts, school and classroom items, days of the
week, zoo and farm animals, numbers, shapes, seasons, colors, clothing, and fruit. Teach them
commands such as "line up, raise your hand, and go to the circle." Use songs and chants to make
learning fun.

3. Use visuals, including graphs, posters, videos, picture books, educational computer games and
realia to help students acquire language. Bring in a bag of old clothing when teaching the names of
clothes; share banana slices or use Cheerios for counting and M&Ms for color.

4. It's great to use seasonal themes because they are meaningful to the children. One example would
be teaching about autumn by collecting fallen leaves, decorating pumpkins, creating your own
costumes or masks, making butter from whipped cream, dressing up as Pilgrims and Indians, and
having a simple Thanksgiving Feast. These activities make the vocabulary more relevant to the
children and, therefore, more memorable.

6. You will also want to build on the prior knowledge of your students. Make sure the theme is
appropriate for the culture of the country you are teaching in. A Halloween theme will not mean very
much to students in China.

7. Activate prior knowledge. Choose themes that can be linked to what your students already know.
Pre-teach vocabulary and concepts that your ELLs will probably not know such as nursery rhymes.

Accommodations for EFL Students

For those of you who are teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL), you will need to modify these
ideas to meet the needs of your English language learners. You can expect to go much slower and
provide a lot more repetition. You want to develop cognitive skills but not at the expense of social,
emotional, and physical development. Young children should not be learning English by completing
phonics worksheets.

What are the signs of a good preschool program? Read this article on kindeergarten classrooms atKid
Source.