The Preliminary Unit: Is it Communicative?

Hi hi hi! 

It has been way too friggin' long since I have written a post, but I am not blaming myself for this one. Last year was so difficult; it's inexplicable what educators had to do. 

To my surbrise, this year isn't much easier. I've almost gone as far as to say it's harder. My students feel so unbelievably young this year, and there is so much classroom management needed. 

As much as I would love to give more updates, I am going to save that for another post. Today, I want to talk about the preliminary unit. 

I absolutely HATE the first unit. I hate it. Not only because I think a unit on numbers and the date is ridiculous, but also because it's hard to make it communicative. So, I am going to take some topics that I think are commonly in the preliminary unit and talk about some ideas I have used to make it more communicative. 

Introducing ourselves:

Obvi, one of the first things we teach our students is to introduce themselves. My name is...

But, once we all know each other's names, it becomes pointless practice. And as you know, I want everything in my class to have a purpose. I am not saying I am there yet, but that's my goal. I want my students to be using the language for a purpose. 

Game 1: 

The first game I thought of was having students take an index card/post-it and writing a new name. Any name, but I told them to try to make it funny. They had to go around and ask everyone for their new name, and at the end of the activity, we voted on our favorite fake name. The kids loved it, and the cool thing about this is that you can do it multiple times as long as you switch names. 

Game 2:

The second game that I really love is similar. Each student picks a new name, but they have to write the same name as someone else in the class. Only one person will write an individual name. Then, I shuffle them and have each kid take a new name. They have to go around asking each other their names until they find the person with the same name as them. The person without a partner is out. However, I didn't like having kids get out because then they were watching for so long. Instead, I started having kids who had no partner do their favorite dance move for the class (challenge by choice, obviously). 

The date:

I am begging you: please stop spending a month learning the days of the week and the date. This can simply be taught all year by asking what the date is. 

I create a birthday board in the center of my classroom, so I basically ask: what's the date? and is it anyone's birthday today? If it is, we then sing to that person. 

That's all for now, my friends! Let me know your ideas, questions, thoughts, etc.! 

With love,

Timothy