Teaching Beginners - 30 Cool Tools

On 15th April we had our first VES “How To Teach Beginners” Training Session. We covered -

Key Principles - big ideas to bear in mind when preparing and teaching for VES

Cool Tools - ideas for topics / vocabulary to teach beginners, even with no resources

Teaching Techniques - different methods you can use to teach.

Cool Tools are really topic or material ideas that you can teach absolute beginners, even without resources in most cases. They are:

#1 What’s your name?

#2 Where are you from?

#3 How old are you?

#4 Numbers (1-10, 11-20, 30-100, 100+ as required)

#5 What time is it? (digital clock only)

#6 What’s your phone number?

#7 What’s your date of birth?

#8 Months (January, February etc)

#9 When’s your birthday?

#10 What day is it today?

#11 Days (Monday, Tuesday etc)

#12 Yesterday it was…

#13 Tomorrow it will be…

#14 How do you spell your name?

#15 The alphabet

#16 Vowels (especially pronunciation A E I O U)

#17 Key verbs for the classroom - “listen”, “repeat”, “write”

#18 More key verbs with an easy action e.g - “sleep”, “wake up”, “eat”, “drink”, “watch”, “walk”

#19 Personal pronouns - “I, you, he / she / it, we, you, they”

#20 Pronoun + Key Verbs e.g. “I write. You listen. They eat.”

#21 Pronoun + key verb + e.g. “I eat rice. We drink coffee. They listen to music.”

#22 A typical day e.g. “I wake up at 7. I eat breakfast at 8. I walk in the park at 10.”

#23 Parts of the body

#24 Clothes

#25 Colours

#26 Things in the classroom e.g. pen, paper, table, chair, teacher, student, window.

#27 Food and drink e.g. biscuit, tea, coffee, water, juice, bread, apple etc.

#28 Coins 1p, 2p, 5p, 20p, 50p, £1, £5 £10 etc

#29 Verbs - “buy, pay, sell, give”

#30 Weather “sunny, rainy, hot, cold, windy”