Daily routines

An example of active learning would be to teach children by using flash cards and discussion. For instance, in the case of teaching daily routines, one can start by asking the children what they normally do in the morning before they come to school.

Elicit as many words or phrases as possible and encourage discussion and comparisons between children. Then bring up flash cards related to daily routines (such as a man brushing his teeth or combing his hair). Ask the children one by one what they can see in the picture – what we call the activity – and anything else you can talk about.

Make links and associations between the flash card image and the activities mentioned by the children.

Try to put the images in order. Ask the children every time you do this. For example, “do you wash your teeth before you wake up?” and so on, until you have the flash cards in a sequence. Try to put them up somewhere where the children can see them properly. Once you finish, go over the events chronologically once more.

Once the collage is up, call out individual kids one by one. Ask them to tell the class about their personal morning routine, pointing to the images as they speak. Encourage them to use statements such as “I brush my teeth, then I wash my face, then I go to school”.

When the discussion is over, you could introduce a song the children can sing along to which is related to the topic at hand.

Hokey pokey

When learning the difference between left and right, one could do so by using the hokey pokey. Ask the children to stand up in front of an interactive whiteboard. Tell them enthusiastically that you are going to sing a song and learn a dance. Bring up the topic of the Hokey Pokey song and ask whether any of the children know the song. If so, elicit as much from them as possible and praise them for telling you about it.

Then explain what they are going to do during the song. Go through the actions slowly, getting them to do as you do.

Sing the song slowly as you go along. Once the first part is finished, repeat it, encouraging them to sing along with you.

When you’ve gone through the whole song slowly, ask them whether they’d like to watch the video. Play the video, do the dance and sing the song yourself, however, give them time to watch the video and process the actions. Then play the video again, this time encouraging them to join in with dancing and singing. You might wish to play it a third time, unless they lose interest.

In this way, the children are unknowingly learning a very basic distinction while dancing, laughing and often falling all over each other.